Uncommon Courage
by Sabari
Summary: Major Lorne finds himself coping with Colonel Sheppard's usual job in Atlantis. Meanwhile, on an exploratory mission, Rodney discovers a device that may have the power to destroy the Wraith - or possibly Atlantis!
1. Chapter 1

**_Author's Note: This story is completely written. I will be uploading one chapter per day. It is potentially slightly AU, but not on purpose. It doesn't matter a great deal, but it is set in season three, prior to "Sunday"._** _ **I wrote this for my entertainment, and I am publishing it here for yours. Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it.**_

* * *

Major Evan Lorne was having a bad day.

Actually, it had started out okay. He and his team weren't scheduled to go off world, which meant he only had to deal with the usual issues on Atlantis while Colonel John Sheppard and his team went out to explore the unknown and try not to die in the process.

With Sheppard gone, Lorne was in charge of security, which today had mostly involved turning down various scientists who wanted security teams to go with them while they investigated some of the sections of Atlantis. The moment they had arrived on Atlantis, there had been a sweep through the city. Since then, Sheppard had instituted regular patrols of the city, just in case something got woken up, teleported onto the base or swam in from the ocean. Stranger things had happened.

In any case, Lorne was not prepared to waste time and manpower on the worries of some scientists, especially ones who were -best he could tell- second rate. Dr. Rodney McKay was insufferable, but at least he usually turned out to be right, or he could at least explain his concerns using logic and sentences instead of babbling incoherently and finally admitting to being scared of the dark.

One scientist even went so far as to admit that Sheppard had already turned down his request to be armed whenever exploring the particular level he was concerned with.

All of that wasn't actually so bad. In fact, Lorne kind of enjoyed turning down requests for ridiculous things. It was peculiarly satisfying to be able to say no to geniuses who were used to being right and getting their own way most of the time. He supposed that in itself might be the only compensation Sheppard needed for having McKay on his team. The unlimited ability to say no to McKay and tell him to stop talking sounded positively delightful.

The bad part of the day started when one of the many doctors decided to go around Lorne. After being told that he would not be granted a full security escort into the lab he'd found, Dr. Hannon went to Dr. Elizabeth Weir with his complaint. The first Lorne heard of it was a request from her via his earwig to come and see her in her office.

"Major," Weir began in her typically patient tone, but she looked annoyed, "Is there some sort of problem that I should know about?"

Lorne quickly reviewed everything he'd seen, heard, said and done since getting up this morning. The weirdest thing he could think of was that he couldn't find his toothpaste, but eventually discovered that was because he'd put it in the wrong drawer of the case he kept it in when he'd used it the day before.

"Not that I'm aware of," he answered, hoping there wasn't a problem _he_ should know about but didn't that had somehow made its way back to Weir when it should have gone through him first.

The mixture of civilians and soldiers on Atlantis was a difficult and complicated thing, especially since the expedition was ultimately commanded by Dr. Weir, who was in no way a soldier and in fact appeared to frown on various military practices. Accommodations were made for both parties, which led to some very odd day to day practices. After all, these weren't just civilians, they were the best and brightest in their various fields, and they knew it. Many of them were egotistical, all of them were eccentric. In fact, things seemed to run at their smoothest during emergency situations when safety protocols that had been proposed, agreed on and instituted went into effect. Daily life was a bit hectic.

"Does the name Dr. Hannon jog your memory?" Weir inquired, crossing her arms.

Now he realized she looked more than annoyed, and it seemed to be with him, but Lorne wasn't sure why. Lorne had a bad habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He didn't tend to cause trouble, or go to look for it, but it seemed perfectly capable of finding him. Somehow, ever since he'd joined the Stargate program, it seemed like he was always nearby when things went wrong. He supposed that was possibly because things went wrong an awful lot, which had nothing to do with him, but he was beginning to gain an instinct for it. Just now that instinct was saying things were about to go very wrong.

"Dr. Hannon came to me this morning," Dr. Weir said, "Claiming you threatened to strike him."

The temptation had certainly been there. Lorne had found himself required to tolerate a lot of obnoxious personalities in his time, most especially since being sent to Atlantis, which seemed to be home to the greatest concentration of ego-maniacal borderline sociopaths known to man. Frankly, he couldn't see how any of them got any work done, considering that they all seemed to be mini versions of Dr. McKay, who was perhaps the most self-absorbed person Lorne had ever met.

Even so, Lorne was a good soldier. He might make quips about such things, but he was not one to make threats he didn't intend to carry out, and he of course would not be a very good second to Sheppard if he went around beating up the scientists he was supposed to be protecting.

"Did you threaten to strike Dr. Hannon?" Weir inquired when Lorne failed to immediately respond.

"No, Ma'am," Lorne replied, "I did not. Dr. Hannon came to me this morning with a ridiculous request-"

"Ridiculous how?" Weir interrupted.

Lorne broke off his report to explain to her about the security team, then resumed, "I denied his request. He threw a bit of a fit and refused to leave for awhile. But he eventually gave up. Or that's what I thought. Anyway, at no point during or after that conversation did I threaten to strike him."

Inside, he was burning with anger, but he didn't let that show. Damn that Hannon, going over his head to Weir, telling lies about Lorne to try and get his own way. The whole point of the system was to keep Weir from being bothered by minor issues. That was part of the job of the chief of security. It was procedure for people to bring their security complaints, questions and requests to the chief of security. Had Dr. Hannon been in the military, Lorne would have set him straight the moment Weir let him go. But Dr. Hannon was a civilian, and Weir had made it quite clear that she had an open door policy. Moreover, this was actually Sheppard's job and Lorne was only filling in while the colonel was out. That left Lorne with no real authority to rebuke Hannon.

"Do you have the manpower to accede to this request?" Dr. Weir asked.

"Yes, but, Dr. Weir, I've been turning down requests all day. If I granted every one of them-"

"I'm not asking you to grant them all. Just the one," Dr. Weir told him.

Inside, Lorne railed against this. If he granted one request, he would be bombarded with queries as to why he had not granted all of the others, each of which was more absurd than the last. He was about to have a lot of very pissed off scientists beating down his door.

But all he said was, "Yes, Ma'am."

Weir didn't formally dismiss him so much as give him a look suggesting he should go away before she sat down and started going through a pile of papers on her desk. Lorne took that as his cue to leave. It seemed to him that something had been bothering the good doctor lately.

Historically, she had been very perceptive, and good at managing diplomatic relations not just with other worlds, but with the various factions within Atlantis itself. But ever since her most recent trip to Earth and the subsequent visit of Richard Woolsey, Dr. Weir had seemed preoccupied, distracted, and at times short tempered. It wasn't like her. Something was bothering her, and it wasn't difficult to guess that it had something to do with that. Lorne guessed her position as leader of the Atlantis expedition was being threatened, or at least it had been threatened once and now she was worried about how easily all of this could be taken away from her. Lorne couldn't blame her for that.

Though he didn't want a position shouldering that much responsibility all the time, Lorne could see that Dr. Weir loved Atlantis, loved its people, and loved doing her job. It was agreed throughout the city, even amongst its military members, that she was the best person for the job that anyone knew of.

Because of this, he was willing to cut her some slack and suffer the minor inconvenience of being all but bludgeoned with nonsense requests from civilians without complaint. Besides, for Lorne, it was only until Sheppard got back. After that it would be Sheppard's problem.

After considering who had been annoying him the most lately, Lorne contacted Lt. Edison and told him to get some guys together to go and act as body guards for Dr. Hannon. Edison had recently made a wise ass remark about painting being 'unmanly'. Edison had no way of knowing that Lorne enjoyed painting in his free time, and so had no reason to suspect that Lorne was now irritated with him, but Lorne enjoyed his revenge anyway, knowing that Edison would have a miserable time with Dr. Hannon. Chances were that Edison would select some men he'd been irritated by recently to suffer with him. Lorne was just happy that being in charge of security exempted him from trivial pursuits such as that, otherwise he would have had to go in order to set a good example.

About an hour later, Lorne would have given just about anything to trade places with Edison. The parade of complaints was endless. All of them had to do with objections to Lorne granting Hannon's request but not anyone else's. Lorne knew that they would be going to Weir after him, because that was what had gotten Dr. Hannon his way, and everyone knew it. But if they were going to Weir, he wasn't hearing about it. He hoped that was because Dr. Weir was telling them that there simply were not enough men to provide security escorts for every single scientist in Atlantis, especially not since some of them were needed to make trips off world.

Lorne was right in the middle of not listening to a botanist explain -in exhaustive detail- why there should be a security contingent posted outside the plant nursery at all times. The man wasn't even the head of his department, and had no authority or particular reason to be here. In fact, the head of his department was firmly opposed to more military involvement and structuring on Atlantis than already existed. If Lorne saw fit to grant this man's stupid request, then he'd have another botanist in here complaining about the military presence. It was at this point that Dr. Weir called him on his earwig.

He held up a hand to silence the botanist, who gleefully pretended not to notice.

"Shut up!" Lorne finally shouted in exasperation before activating his earwig, "Yes, Dr. Weir?"

" _Major Sheppard's team is overdue. We tried contacting them on the radio, but received no response. I'd like you to get a team together to go and check on them. Take someone as backup. It may be nothing, Dr. McKay seemed to think that radio reception might be a little sketchy on the planet."_

"Understood," Lorne said, deactivating the transmitter on his earwig before exclaiming, "Thank God!"

He got up from behind the desk and edged around the botanist, who had resumed complaining the moment the exchange between Lorne and Weir appeared to be concluded.

"Where are you going!?" the botanist demanded, "I'm not through with you!"

"Well I'm through with you," Lorne said, "Somebody else will be in here to take over shortly. You can try complaining to him, but I'll tell you now he probably won't be as friendly as me."

And with that, he left the spluttering botanist behind and went to gear up before making his way to the 'Gate Room. On the way, he contacted the members of his team and Major Dorsey via the earwig, telling them to gear up and meet him there.

* * *

Once on the planet, Lorne reported no sign of enemy activity, and no sign of Col. Sheppard's team either. Dr. Weir admonished him to be careful, and then the Stargate deactivated. Lorne's and Dorsey's teams had spread out immediately on arrival, covering every angle, looking for signs of life, whether native, invading or the people from Atlantis.

"Major," this came from Lt. Reed, and Lorne hurried over to see what he'd found.

Lt. Reed was, at least in comparison to Lorne, a bit of a hulking giant. Lorne had initially found him intimidating, but it had quickly become quite apparent to him that the man was really a pussycat. Reed seemed even less intimidating after Lorne met Ronon Dex, who was just as tall but at least three times as mean. These days, Lorne didn't even really notice that the top of his head barely came to Reed's shoulder. When he thought about it (which was rarely) he supposed tilting his head back so he could look at Reed when they were talking was just something he'd gotten used to after awhile.

"Looks like they headed off this way," Reed said, nodding towards some tracks he'd found.

The dark soil was soft, probably from a recent rain, and the prints of Sheppard's team showed so clearly that Lorne could easily pick out individuals by the tracks they'd left. From the looks of things, they'd wandered off in a random direction, but Lorne somehow doubted that was the case. Something must have convinced the team to head off into the forest. It seemed safe to assume that it was probably an energy reading since McKay picking up an energy reading was what the team had come to investigate in the first place.

"Dorsey, you and your team stay here and keep an eye on the 'Gate," Lorne said.

"Yes sir," Dorsey responded.

Technically, Lorne and Dorsey shared the same rank, but the military had a convenient way of dealing with what would otherwise lead to conflict. There was the factor of seniority to consider. Lorne had not only been a major longer than Dorsey, he'd been involved both with the Stargate Program as a whole and the Atlantis expedition specifically longer than Dorsey. But more importantly, Col. Sheppard had named Lorne as his second in command. And then of course there was even the additional factor that Dr. Weir had given this particular mission (that of finding out what had happened to Sheppard's team and providing assistance if needed) to Major Lorne, making it his responsibility.

"Alright," Lorne said, addressing his own team, "Let's move out. But be careful, we don't know what happened to Colonel Sheppard and his team or why they're not answering."

Reed took the point position as they headed out. Lorne followed a few feet behind him, and the rest of the team strung out after them. Lorne had a bad habit of forgetting that -as team leader- he was never supposed to be in the point position, but Reed was good at reminding him without being overt about it.

There was a definite path carved from the forest, and the team was able to move freely. As a result, it wasn't long before the Stargate was completely lost from view.

* * *

It was evident from the tracks that McKay had started to flag. Even though it was his interest in the energy reading that had likely brought the team out this far, he'd clearly stopped several times. Lorne could just imagine him asking for a break, and putting forth myriad complaints when Sheppard ignored him. It was always a puzzle to Lorne how exhausted geeks who could barely breathe without wheezing somehow still found the energy within themselves to complain vociferously.

"Major..." Reed sounded uncertain, and Lorne realized the lieutenant had stopped just at the crest of the uphill trail they'd been climbing for the last half hour.

He jogged to catch up with Reed and then stopped.

The trail sloped sharply downward from their position, and the forest opened out into a clearing, or what had probably been one a long time ago. Now it was overgrown, and it took a moment to pick out the portions of ruined Ancient architecture from among the brush and vines and saplings that had broken through the floor of what looked to have once been several structures.

After waiting for the rest of the team to catch up, and seeing no sign of life or danger of any kind, Lorne led the way down towards the ruins. The rest of his team followed cautiously. It seemed obvious that this had to have been the destination of Sheppard's team. The question was, why weren't they here now? It was Coughlin who found the answer to that question after Lorne's team had spread out to investigate the ruins.

"Major Lorne!"

Lorne left his area of investigation in favor of jogging to the area he'd given Coughlin to explore. Coughlin had found an area where the floor had remained intact, and about half the walls were still standing. There was even a portion of roof left from the room that had been here once. But what had caused Coughlin to yell was the presence of Sheppard's team, all four of them, lying prone in various positions around a device located in the center of the room.

Lorne couldn't be sure of course, because it wasn't his field, but the device looked to be inert. It wasn't glowing anywhere, and no sound was issuing from it. But McKay had clearly plugged his tablet into it, and been messing around with it for some reason. Possibly that had backfired.

"Stay here," Lorne instructed Coughlin, then he cautiously approached the nearest body, that of Teyla Emmagan, keeping a wary eye on the Ancient device and hoping it didn't activate because of his proximity or something.

Gingerly, he knelt down and checked Teyla's pulse on her neck. He found it to be strong and steady, suggesting she was unconscious but unhurt. He moved on to check Ronon, then Sheppard, and finally McKay. They all seemed to be fine, though McKay's pulse was a trifle faster than the rest.

"They're unconscious," Lorne reported, straightening up after checking McKay's pulse.

"Stunned?" Reed, who had arrived a moment before, inquired.

"I don't know," Lorne said, "But I don't think so. Let's get them away from this device, just in case."

They all knew it was possible that the device could have gone off and rendered the team unconscious. If that had happened once, it could happen again. That was why Lorne had approached it alone.

Gently, and with great care, Lorne and his team moved Sheppard and the others to the far side of the ruins. They knew it was possible that the team could be injured in ways they couldn't see and moving them might actually do more harm to them, but it was Lorne's opinion that leaving them near the device was a risk they shouldn't take. However, they left McKay's tablet plugged in, none of them daring to fool around with unknown technology.

With the four of them, it had taken two trips to get everybody, and Lorne with Coughlin had taken Sheppard last. Still crouching next to Sheppard after putting him down, Lorne put in a call to Dorsey, informing him that the team had been found unconscious but seemingly unharmed otherwise and also about the device, detailing the fact that he and his team had moved Sheppard and the others some distance from it and telling Dorsey to relay that message to Atlantis.

After that, Lorne started to turn and examine Sheppard more thoroughly, while the rest of his team did the same for the others. He'd detected no obvious signs of punctures or breaks, but his initial inspection had been rather hurried. Before they moved the team further, they needed to be more sure of what kind of injuries they might be dealing with. Also, they needed to put litters together to carry them more safely. None of them were doctors, of course, but they were more qualified for first aid than the average rabbit, because the military had taken into account the reality that a doctor might not always be handy when you needed one and you might have to take care of yourself or your team without outside help and had prepared its members accordingly.

What Lorne was not prepared for was Sheppard opening his eyes, taking one look at him and making a lunge for him. Unprepared for the assault, Lorne fell over and Sheppard landed on top of him, going immediately for his throat before Lorne knew what was happening.


	2. Chapter 2

Lorne was a pretty fair fighter, but the combination of being attacked by someone he'd thought was unconscious and who also happened to be his CO had caught him totally off guard. Sheppard wasn't about to give him time to recover, cutting off his air even as Lorne began to fight back.

He didn't have time to wonder why this was happening. Lorne took less than a second to snap out of the disbelief. He vetoed all of his initial instinctive reactions, as all of them involved doing direct, intentional damage to his opponent. Normally that was fine, but in this case he didn't want to hurt Sheppard, he just wanted the man off his throat.

His first response was to raise his hands and try to break Sheppard's grip by grabbing his arms from various angles and pulling or pushing at him. Lorne all-too-briefly succeeded in loosening Sheppard's grip once doing that, buying himself a few extra moments of consciousness. But Sheppard had the physical advantage firstly by being bigger than Lorne overall, and secondly by being on top of him and therefore being able to use his full weight to his advantage, and thirdly because he had an essentially unlimited supply of air in comparison to Lorne's, which was being cut off almost entirely.

Lorne didn't think all of the factors out, he merely realized he wasn't getting anywhere and needed to change tactics. So he brought his legs up and around, and crossed them at the ankles in front of Sheppard. Then Lorne tried to leverage Sheppard off him by pushing the larger man away using his legs. For a moment, he feared he had executed the maneuver too late, as he felt weakness spreading through his limbs and darkness forming in his vision, warnings that his consciousness was failing him.

Then, quite suddenly, he broke Sheppard's grip. Sheppard fell back heavily, while Lorne gasped, trying to get air in even as he rolled onto his side with the intention of getting up. It was as far as he got.

A high ringing sound filled the air for a moment, and Lorne felt a tingling rush through him. The very air seemed to vibrate for a moment, and then the ringing faded and things were silent once more...

* * *

...Though he had no perception that time had passed, Lorne realized it must have. Not only was he still lying on his side, but when he looked around he saw that the rest of his team was also down. Sheppard was down and seemed to be staying there for the moment, the rest of Sheppard's team remained where they'd been put, not having awakened when Sheppard did.

Lorne's head was spinning, and to his somewhat impaired vision it looked like the whole world was sort of... pulsing. He blinked slowly and rolled onto his hands and knees, feeling every bone and muscle in his body groaning a protest. Lorne shook his head, trying to clear it but succeeding only in making his vision flicker for a moment, leaving him more disoriented than before.

"Is everybody okay?" He managed to ask, realizing it was going to take him a bit to regain enough equilibrium to make his way over to the fallen members of his team, "Reed? Coughlin?"

It seemed to him that there was another member of his team, but absurdly he couldn't remember their name for the life of him. It bothered him not only because it was something he should know, but because remembering names had never been a problem for him before.

Suddenly there seemed to be smoke gathering from everywhere. Lorne struggled to figure out why this had happened, then abandoned that vain pursuit in favor of trying to find a way to get out of the smoke. But it was seeping out from the trees, and weaving through the ruins in a flood. There wasn't any direction that wasn't filling rapidly with smoke.

As Lorne fought his way to a standing position, the acrid smoke hit his lungs and he started to cough. For reasons he couldn't figure out, he was still bothered by the name of the third man and staggered in the direction of his team mate. He never made it, something in the smoke hit him hard and he went down...

* * *

...Lorne woke with a gasp, to find he had in fact not moved a bit. He was still lying on his side, as he had been when the... well... whatever it was, had hit him. There was no smoke. He could remember the names of all his team mates. He found he was able to clear his spotty vision by blinking, though trying to breathe at first resulted in his bruised throat rebelling and making him cough.

That was all fine. It all made sense. What didn't make sense was the fact that he still imagined he was able to taste the phantom smoke at the back of his mouth.

"Major?" this faint inquiry came from Reed.

Having achieved a sitting position, Lorne looked in Reed's direction. It looked like Reed had been about ready to intervene on Lorne's behalf because he was next to where Sheppard was lying. Reed was slowly sitting up, evidently uncertain as to whether or not he'd been hurt.

Lorne attempted to respond, but his throat wasn't ready for words yet. In fact, it was barely on board with the idea of breathing again. It felt like Sheppard had come perilously close to crushing the life out of him. But Lorne determined he was otherwise undamaged, which was good enough for the moment.

"What the hell was that?" Coughlin moaned, coming to a few beats after Lorne and Reed, "Oh, my head."

" _Major Lorne, respond please!"_ Lorne flinched at the sound of Dorsey's voice in his ear.

"Yes, Dorsey," Lorne said, his voice barely audible, "We're here... sort of."

" _What does that mean?"_ Dorsey sensibly asked.

"I'll let you know when I figure it out," Lorne replied, then attempted to clear his throat, which succeeded only in inducing another fit of coughing.

" _Are you okay?"_ Dorsey asked.

"Fine, Dorsey," Lorne said when the coughing subsided, "I'll call you back."

Reed was faster to recover than Lorne, probably on account of not having been half-suffocated before the pulse (for lack of a better term) hit. He got to his feet and offered Lorne a hand up.

"I recommend we get out of here before that thing goes off again," Reed suggested, "Sounds like it didn't reach all the way to the 'Gate."

"Yes, let's do that," Lorne agreed hoarsely, massaging his throat to try and get it a little more enthusiastic about its job of letting air get in and out of his lungs.

They set up the litters as quickly as they could, but it still took two of them to move one member of Sheppard's team, which meant multiple trips. Between the four of them, they hauled half Sheppard's team up the steep incline, left them on the crest and went back for the other two before proceeding onwards. They wanted everybody clear as fast as possible, and had no way of knowing how far the reach of that device was, or what repeated exposure to it might do to them.

They were also now eager to get the team back to the 'Gate before another of them woke up as Sheppard had. They were now prepared for potential violence from Sheppard's team, but none of them fancied their chances if Ronon or Teyla (or both) woke up and were as pissed off as Sheppard seemed to be. McKay they weren't so worried about; they figured any one of them could handle him easily.

About halfway back to the 'Gate, they were forced to stop and rest. During that time, Lorne and his team discovered that -while they had all experienced the pulse- what they had perceived happening afterward differed.

For instance, according to Reed, nobody had been unconscious except for Sheppard's team. What he had seen was Sheppard recovering from Lorne knocking him back, and continuing to go after Lorne. Reed had attempted to intervene, but had been unable to pull Sheppard off for reasons he couldn't figure out. When they had all woken up, Reed confessed to having been all but convinced that Sheppard had succeeded in killing Lorne.

According to Coughlin, some very angry natives had inexplicably shown up and he'd tried to convince them that the teams from Atlantis were just peaceful explorers. In his vision... thing... he'd failed to mollify the natives and they had shot Lorne.

Decker reported that the rest of Sheppard's team had awoken and attacked them. Having been closest to Ronon when it happened, Decker hadn't stood a chance.

Lorne reflected that this wasn't the first time they had encountered a device that induced hallucinations. He just hoped that getting away from the thing would stop it from happening to them again, and hopefully Sheppard and his team would come around after awhile too.

He wondered what Sheppard and his team were seeing now...

* * *

...Rodney was having a bad day. A worse day than usual. In fact, he couldn't remember when he'd had a more completely miserably awful day. And he had some pretty terrible days to compare it to.

Actually, it had begun just like any other mission day. Rodney had barely gotten any sleep the night before, having stayed up late with Radek Zelenka, working on a theoretical new means of maximizing their power efficiency. It was still on the drawing board, and Rodney knew it would be another week or more before it was even coherent enough to give Dr. Weir a report on, but it looked promising.

Rodney had found it was always good to bury himself in work the day before a mission, so he didn't have time or energy to think of all the things that could possibly go wrong. Granted, that was normally Rodney's job, but he'd discovered he had little aptitude for predicting how field missions might go wrong. People and culture usually had a lot to do with why things went wrong, and Rodney had come to accept the fact that he couldn't understand or predict the outcome of interacting with either of those.

But even though he may have consciously accepted it, Rodney's highly reactive subconscious would not let it go. Left unrestricted, his imagination would go on a wild nightmare ride involving every conceivable bad thing that could possibly happen to him, the rest of his team and Atlantis... and even some things that couldn't. Rodney's imagination was usually confined to inventing things and figuring out how to make things work better, and normally he had no gift for storytelling... except when unwillingly concocting scenarios in his head that terrified him.

Zelenka had once remarked that Rodney was like a mother hen when he left, offering everyone under his jurisdiction pieces of advice and admonishments about how equipment should be run, what experiments were underway and what the next step was. According to Zelenka, Rodney hovered. Zelenka had even suggested that Rodney assumed all of the scientists under his purview would immediately throw a wild party in his absence and wind up burning down Atlantis while he was gone. The thought had never crossed Rodney's mind until it was suggested, and he had since added the possible dangers of wild partying to his endless list of things to worry about.

Sheppard had inevitably come looking for Rodney that morning.

At some point, Sheppard had realized that it was necessary to manually disengage Rodney from his regular duties as the head of science and research. Time had no meaning once Rodney found a problem that needed to be unknotted. Rodney had been known to stand motionless for hours trying to untangle problems he couldn't solve, and his staff was so long used to it that they knew it wasn't worth the effort to begin airing complaints until the seventh or eighth consecutive hour without progress. Sheppard, on the other hand, had a schedule to keep where missions were concerned, and he had the authority to pull Rodney off whatever he was working on.

Rodney had noticed a few looks of quiet awe from his staff when Sheppard breezed in and yanked Rodney off a problem, forcibly if it was necessary. None of them could do that, and Rodney realized it probably impressed them more that Sheppard could get him to stop with little more than a word than that Sheppard could have been in Mensa, which Rodney thought was more worth noting.

After Sheppard had removed Rodney from his lab, things went pretty smoothly. They went through the 'Gate, Rodney located the direction of the strange energy reading, and they started walking. And walking. And walking. And walking some more. Then, just for a change of pace, they walked uphill. After walking an interminable number of steps, they at last reached the source of the reading.

Without needing to be prodded, Rodney immediately set to work. He forgot the various aches and pains he had acquired over the long trek to reach this place, and even managed to ignore the mosquitoes that were slowly draining his life blood and undoubtedly filling him up with all sorts of toxins and potential diseases he didn't even want to know about. The humidity, which had left him gasping, was no longer of much interest to him. It was all about that device.

Sheppard had remarked that the device looked a little like a DHD, and Rodney had immediately mocked him for that. Maybe on the surface, it was about the same shape, with buttons on top and a big button in the middle. But it was smaller, the symbols on its surface were not 'Gate address symbols, and of course the power signature was completely different. Rodney had been about to explain all of this to Sheppard when everything inexplicably went to hell.

Rodney plugged into the device, and had just started to feel around its systems when he detected a power build up in the device just before an unbearably high ringing sound filled the air for a moment, and Rodney felt a disturbing tingling in his extremities, which gradually spread to the rest of him. The air seemed to vibrate for a moment, he imagined he could feel it shivering against him, and then the ringing faded and a momentary silence descended.

"Huh," Rodney remarked.

Sheppard looked around slowly, like he expected something else to happen, or something to jump out at them. After a few seconds, he seemed satisfied that everything looked the same.

"Rodney... what the hell was that?" Sheppard asked, "What did you do?"

"Me? I... nothing," Rodney protested, "I just plugged into the device. That's all."

"Well maybe you should unplug from it before you piss it off," Sheppard suggested.

"My plugging into it had nothing to do with it," Rodney protested, "The device was already active when we got here, that was the energy reading we were tracking."

"I don't like it," Ronon said, eying the surrounding forest suspiciously, as though expecting enemies to suddenly come swarming out at them at any moment.

"Nor do I," Teyla admitted softly.

"It's fine," Rodney tried to assure them, "Look, we came here to investigate this device. I think it could be a weapon we could use against the Wraith. Now, if you'll let me do my job-"

"MCKAY!" Sheppard snapped.

He sounded angry, and Rodney flinched, not having expected a reaction that strong. He looked at Sheppard uneasily, and Sheppard glared back. God, Sheppard looked serious.

"Okay, okay," Rodney said, annoyed but obedient, and he unplugged his tablet, "Happy now?"

"Yes," Sheppard replied, "Now let's get back to the 'Gate."

"The 'Gate?" Rodney heard the whining petulance in his own voice, but he couldn't help it, "We just got here! This device is the whole reason we came out here to the land time forgot. We're here to study it, or have you forgotten that?"

"We've seen it, I'm not impressed," Sheppard replied coolly, "Now let's go."

"Colonel, be reasonable," Rodney had found that sometimes appealing to Sheppard's rank bought him a little bit more leeway, "We have no idea what this does or how it works. And we never will if we just pack up and go home. We haven't even been here five minutes."

"Okay, let's take a vote," Sheppard said, which startled Rodney because that had never been how the chain of command worked, even in Atlantis, "Ronon?" Ronon shook his head, "Teyla?" she also shook hers, "And I make it three to one. We're goin' home."

"But-" Rodney began, but Sheppard cut him off.

"Let's go!"

Defeated and fuming, Rodney stuffed his tablet back into his pack and slung it over his shoulders, which he was once again aware were aching. At least, that was what he tried to do. Somehow, he managed to completely miss the strap with his hand and wound up hurling his backpack across the clearing, bouncing it off one of the ancient walls, which crumbled and collapsed. Fortunately, it had only been a half-wall, and was in no way supporting the ceiling.

"RODNEY!" Sheppard snapped, "This is no time for a temper tantrum."

"I wasn't-" Rodney stammered, then tried again, "I didn't... I..." he gave up trying to figure out what he was attempting to say, and instead stalked over to where his pack had landed, snatched it up and tried again to put it back on.

This time he got it on, but the strap suddenly snapped and it fell off. That should have been impossible. Equipment was routinely checked. Checking it was part of gearing up. The pack was sturdy, and had been in good condition when they left. In fact, it seemed to be in fine working order now, and Rodney couldn't figure out how or why the strap had broken where and when it had.

"RODNEY!" the sound of his own name as yelled by Sheppard was going to get old, and fast, "Stop messing around."

"Messing?" Rodney was so outraged by the accusation that his voice was barely a squeak, "Messing?" he gestured to the broken strap, "Does this look like messing around to you?"

"Better take better care of your gear, McKay," Ronon suggested, looking amused.

"Oh thanks," Rodney said sarcastically, "But this isn't my fault. It just snapped for no reason."

"Suuuuure it did," Sheppard rolled his eyes, and gestured for Ronon to take point leading them back up the inclined path that would lead them to the Stargate.

"It did!" Rodney insisted, but it was clear nobody believed him.

Things only got worse on the way back. It seemed like Rodney tripped over every rock, tree root and clump of dirt there was on the way back. Sheppard was impatient with him, Ronon seemed to think it was hilarious, and Teyla just averted her eyes as though embarrassed. After a seeming eternity, the Stargate was finally in sight.

"Dial it up, Rodney," Sheppard commanded.

Tired, muddy, bruised and scraped, Rodney did as he was told. Or at least he tried to. He got six of the symbols, but then he couldn't complete the dialing sequence. He punched the seventh symbol and the whole thing just deactivated. Puzzled, he tried again.

"It's not working," Rodney said.

"So make it work," Sheppard retorted.

"I'm trying," Rodney shot back, "Look."

He punched in the symbols once again while Sheppard looked on. He got six in, and then the device shut down. He did it again, just to make sure Sheppard was watching.

"So fix it," Sheppard told him.

For the next forty-five minutes, Rodney fussed with the DHD. He managed to nearly electrocute himself twice, and got nowhere. There was power. It seemed to be reaching the right places. The device seemed to be communicating with the Stargate. He could find no reason whatsoever for it not to work. Even if the Stargate on Atlantis had been inexplicably destroyed, the failure to connect wouldn't look like this. Finally, Ronon had evidently had enough. He hauled Rodney away from the DHD by the collar, then punched in the address for himself.

"That's not going to-" Rodney broke off as the Stargate loudly activated, "HOW DID YOU DO THAT!?"

Ronon just gave him a look of reproach.

"What? You think I was pretending the DHD was broken so we could stay here?"

"You said it, not me."

"I wouldn't do that!" Rodney was offended, but also hurt when Sheppard gave him the same look while entering his IDC, "I _WOULDN'T_!"

They returned through the 'Gate, and made their report to Dr. Weir. Actually, Rodney tried, but when he couldn't remember the designation they'd given the planet, Sheppard took over. Rodney was more than a little perturbed by this. He couldn't remember the names of his own staff members to save his life, but Rodney had never forgotten the name or address of a planet in the Stargate system. Not once.

It irked him even more to hear Weir say that they should study the device, perhaps even bring it back. Sheppard didn't buck her authority, though he did insist on bringing Zelenka along to 'speed up the process', which Rodney took to be code for 'to stop McKay from screwing around'.

Back they went, and the return trip was twice as miserable as the one out. It seemed grossly unfair that everybody seemed to think it was funny whenever Rodney tripped. It was also embarrassing that Zelenka didn't trip once, nor did he seem remotely out of breath when they finally reached their destination. Normally Rodney was able to do better in the field than anyone on his staff. He was miserable in comparison to all the soldiers, but it was a point of personal pride that he did as well or better than any of what Lt. Aiden Ford had dubbed 'the geek squad', a term that the rest of the Air Force personnel had ensured Rodney and the others would never forget.

After a brief conference with Zelenka, Rodney plugged his tablet back in. Or he tried to. For some reason, he couldn't get the interface to work. He tried unplugging it and plugging it back in. He ran a diagnostic. He tried plugging it in again. He tried powering the tablet off and then on again. Nothing worked. That is, until Zelenka -issuing a stream of irate sounding Czech- swiped the device and plugged it in himself, then thrust it back into Rodney's hands.

Rodney was sensing a trend he didn't like: Anything that could go wrong, would go wrong.


	3. Chapter 3

Lorne had advised Dorsey of the current situation while on the way back to the 'Gate. Dorsey had in turn informed Atlantis. When Lorne's team was close, Dorsey and his team met them to help transport Sheppard's team to the 'Gate. Then they dialed the 'Gate, Lorne sent his IDC and they went through to Atlantis, where a medical team was waiting, along with some strapping marines ready to help restrain Sheppard's team should it become necessary before they were tied down.

"Best come along and let me look at that," Dr. Carson Beckett said, immediately noticing the bruising on Lorne's neck.

"I'm okay, Doc," Lorne assured him, "Take care of Sheppard and his team."

"That wasn't a suggestion, Major," Dr. Beckett told him, "And besides, it goes for the rest of yer team anyhow. You were all affected by somethin' out there, were ye not?"

Lorne had to admit that was true, and reluctantly followed Dr. Beckett back to the infirmary. His team trailed after him, and Dr. Weir followed them, evidently wanting an immediate firsthand report, which Lorne briefly attempted to provide until his voice failed him and Reed took over.

"There certainly seems to be a pattern to these... visions," Dr. Weir observed when Reed finished.

"Aye, if ye consider things going from bad to worse a pattern," Dr. Beckett agreed.

"Did Sheppard say anything before he attacked you?" Dr. Weir inquired.

Lorne shook his head, managing to say, "No, but... it looked like he recognized me."

"But did he see you or something in his head?" Dr. Weir wondered.

"I don't know," Lorne admitted.

By this time, Dr. Beckett had managed to run several tests.

"How are they?" Weir inquired.

"Well, I'd like to run a few more tests to be certain," Dr. Beckett said, "But Major Lorne's team appears to be fine, though I expect the Major may be a wee bit on the quiet side for the next week or so."

"And Colonel Sheppard's team?" Dr. Weir persisted.

"Aye," Dr. Beckett sighed, "Well, so far we've not come up with much, except..."

"Except?" Weir prodded when he trailed off.

"Well, it seems to be some type of radiation I'm unfamiliar with. But it's just barely registering on our scans, so I can't be sure of that," Dr. Beckett answered, then he shook his head,"Otherwise, they all seem to be perfectly healthy," he paused and glanced at McKay's bed, "Well... as healthy as they were to begin with... Give me some more time and I'll give ye a full report."

Weir nodded her ascent.

"Can we go back to work now?" Lorne inquired of Beckett.

"Not until I've finished with you," Beckett replied in his attempting to be stern voice.

Even at his most serious, Beckett was about as intimidating as a teddy bear, but Lorne didn't buck his authority. In fact, nobody did. Beckett might not have been able to intimidate a skittish cat, but the authority he wielded as CMO of Atlantis was quite real. And besides, everybody was fond of him not only because he routinely patched up cuts and bruises and also occasionally saved them from deadly diseases, but because he was one of the nicest people who'd ever existed. If he had a fault, it was that he was afraid of his own genes, which were what had landed the reluctant doctor on the expedition in the first place. He'd technically agreed to come here apparently of his own volition, but -from the way he complained about 'Gate travel- everyone suspected there'd been an amount of coercion involved.

And anyway, Lorne wasn't exactly eager to go back to listening to scientists whine like petulant children about to throw a temper tantrum. Let somebody else deal with that for awhile.

He and the rest of his team sat patiently and quietly while Dr. Beckett and his team did their thing.

There was a certain unspoken understanding between Lorne and Beckett. In Beckett's infirmary, the man was king, and what he said went. Out in the field, the roles were sometimes reversed, with Beckett following Lorne's lead. It was mutually understood between them that neither knew how to do the other's job, but it was their common goal to save as many lives as possible.

After a few minutes of sitting around, something started to bother Lorne.

"Hey, Doc," Lorne said, "How come we're awake and Sheppard's team isn't?"

"Well, son, you and yer team were some distance from the device, and ye only took the one hit, so that might have somethin' to do with it," Beckett replied, "Sheppard and his team took Lord knows how many hits from up close. Since we don't rightly know what the device does, it's impossible to say for sure what kind of effect that might have."

Lorne nodded thoughtfully and left Beckett alone after that.

That made sense, and he wasn't sure why he hadn't thought of it for himself. He wondered if maybe he was still a little out of it somehow. He felt fine though, except for being kind of tired from hauling Sheppard's team all that distance back to the 'Gate, but that would pass.

After several more tests which both Lorne and his team submitted to without protest, Beckett sighed.

"Well, it looks like you and your team are perfectly healthy," Beckett pronounced, "I'm fairly certain you took a dose of that radiation I detected on the others, but I can't find a trace of it. Ye're good to go."

"Thanks, Doc," Lorne said, hopping off the bed he'd been sitting on.

He didn't get much further than that, because Ronon abruptly regained consciousness and seemed to be pretty angry about it. He sat up, and discovered the restraints at his wrists and ankles. Their presence did nothing to reduce his anger, in fact they appeared to upset him more. Like the rest of Sheppard's team, Ronon had been restrained to prevent him from hurting himself or anyone else.

Unfortunately, whoever had tied him down had underestimated how pissed off he would be.

Ronon began to tug at his restraints while the nearest members of Beckett's team moved towards him. Halfway across the room, it took a precious few seconds for Beckett to make it to Ronon's bedside. Actually, he never made it because Ronon tore the restraint on his left wrist. One of the doctors moved in to stop him, and he lashed out, striking the man across the face and knocking him back.

This momentarily intimidated the rest of the medical staff, who hesitated to approach. It gave Ronon time to remove his other wrist restraint. Once he had done that, none of the doctors or nurses dared to approach him. Ronon was normally a friend to the people of Atlantis, but everyone knew him well enough to be afraid if he was pissed, and apparently the medical staff enjoyed having bones that weren't broken a little too much to block Ronon's bid for freedom.

Except for Beckett.

"Now, there's no call ta get all bent outta shape, son," Beckett said, moving towards Ronon slowly with his hands raised in a pacifying gesture, "We're just tryin' to help ye."

Ronon glared at Beckett, still working to free his right ankle from its restraint.

"I have to get out!" Ronon finally snarled, "I can't be here!"

"Why not?" Beckett asked, not missing a beat.

Instead of answering, Ronon tore free of his final restraint.

"Get outta my way, Doc," he growled, and lunged from the bed.

Beckett knew a thing or two about keeping patients calm and under control, but since coming to Atlantis he'd learned it was unwise to persist in standing in the path of the big, angry ones. Beckett had the heart of a lion in terms of courage, but he had no taste or ability for violence. Thus he allowed Ronon to bolt past him. As Ronon fled the infirmary, Beckett turned to Lorne.

"I'm afraid we'll be needin' him back," Beckett said calmly.

Lorne understood. He tapped his earwig, contacting Dr. Weir to inform her of the situation.

"Ronon took off," he said.

" _Was anyone hurt?"_ Dr. Weir asked.

"Hit one of the Docs on the way out. You might want to warn people to stay out of his way."

" _I understand."_

Lorne cut communication, then nodded at his team before turning to Beckett.

"Don't worry; we'll get Ronon back for you."

"I have a better idea," Beckett said.

* * *

By the time Lorne and his team caught up with him, Ronon had made it to the control room. In fact, he'd already had several altercations with security and removed the 'Gate technician from his station, and he'd already dialed out and activated the Stargate.

Reed managed to leap on Ronon just as he was heading for the stairs to get to the Stargate, and the scuffle resulted in their both rolling down the steps. Reed caught an elbow to the face at the bottom of the stairs and lost his hold of Ronon, who ignored him in favor of going for the Stargate.

The remaining security men raised their weapons to stop Ronon, but Lorne held up a hand to stay them. He'd been just a beat behind Reed, but he still had to run to overtake Ronon.

Reed was comparable in size to Ronon, but Lorne was much smaller, and certainly wasn't foolish enough to think for a moment that he could actually overpower or outmatch Ronon in a straight fight. Fortunately, he didn't have to. He only had to buy time.

He tackled Ronon from the side, slamming his shoulder into a point just above Ronon's hip and grabbing at the larger man's legs in an attempt to compromise his balance. It was like slamming into a concrete wall, and Lorne felt the impact shudder through him. Ronon staggered, but kept his feet for a moment, before Coughlin and Decker finally caught up and added their weight to him.

Catching on to the plan, the security guys piled on, and Ronon toppled slowly like a felled tree. Lorne repositioned himself at the first opportunity, getting hold of one of Ronon's arms and holding it out as best he could while Beckett moved in. Beckett managed to inject the sedative he'd prepared, but of course the effect wasn't immediate and staying on the thrashing Ronon was a bit like holding down a large crocodile. Immediately after the sedative was injected, Ronon broke loose of Lorne's grip briefly. In the process of recapturing the arm, Lorne took a pretty solid elbow to the ribs that stunned him for a moment before he was able to finally regain his hold on Ronon. Ronon bucked and tossed and attempted to strike at anyone and everyone, and nearly managed to escape despite the overwhelming manpower devoted solely to the task of keeping him on the ground.

At one point, he even tried screaming at them, demanding to be released and saying over and over that he had to leave, that he couldn't stay, that it wasn't safe if he stayed here. Whatever reasons he had for wanting to leave, he kept them to himself, but that in itself was hardly unusual. Ronon was a man of relatively few words, and almost none of them were ever explanations for his actions.

When the Stargate deactivated, the fight seemed to go out of him. He seemed to know that, even if he got free, the sedative would stop him before he could reactivate the Stargate and go. He was beaten, he knew it, and he seemed to accept that the only thing further struggle would accomplish was potentially hurting someone for no particular reason.

Ronon lay there, seemingly defeated, and let the sedative take hold...

* * *

...If Rodney had been having a bad day before, it got that much worse when Zelenka discovered that he actually had been responsible for activating the device, which had pulsed a couple more times in the last hour while they'd been working on it.

"That's not possible," Rodney asserted, "We wouldn't have been able to track it if it hadn't been powered on."

"Come look at it for yourself then," Zelenka said impatiently.

Zelenka put up with a lot, and Rodney knew it; he usually took his frustrations out on the Czech physicist, and also tended to pin blame on him whenever possible. Zelenka put up with it, probably because he thought it was worth it just to be on the Atlantis team, and possibly because he found being around Rodney's brilliance to be worth the abuse he took. Rodney had never really been a team player, and Zelenka's ability to work with him was a testament to both the man's own intelligence and his tremendous patience. But today he seemed just as fed up with Rodney as everybody else.

Rodney couldn't blame him for that. So far, Rodney had failed to connect his tablet to the device properly, managed to cause it to increase its power buildup and even set off some electrical sparks. He'd also tripped over the cable link up and yanked the tablet connection. He'd misread the readings he was taking, forgotten terminology he'd been familiar with since he was eight and -to top it all off- lost his grip on a power bar he was unwrapping and wound up launching it at the back of Zelenka's head in a truly spectacular display of clumsiness which Zelenka seemed to take as a temper tantrum.

Rodney obediently went and looked at what Zelenka had found. The man was right. The device had been all but inert, but now it was getting more active by the second.

"But where's it pulling power from?" Rodney wondered.

"The real question is: how do we shut it off?" Zelenka replied.

"We don't even know what it's doing," Rodney reminded him, "It may not need to be shut off."

"If it is a weapon as you suspect, then that power buildup has to mean something," Zelenka said, "Knowing our track record with such devices, I'd say something bad."

Rodney mulled that over. He decided Zelenka was probably right.

"Okay, well we know how we powered it up," Rodney said.

"Do we?" Zelenka asked.

"Yes," Rodney replied, "I plugged my tablet in, the device powered up. That simple."

"It could have been activated by proximity," Zelenka countered, "Or touch."

"And it could have been activated by telepathic whales too, but there's no reason to assume that."

Zelenka just stood there, staring at him oddly.

"What? Oh. Right," Rodney deflated a little, "Never mind."

This just wasn't his day.

Rodney wanted to attribute it to being tired, but he knew better. He'd gone days at a time without sleep, working constantly to save Atlantis, to protect it from some enemy force or another, functioning as both lab scientist and field troubleshooter, sometimes switching back and forth between the two roles at a moment's notice without break or pause or ending in sight. If he could do that, what was wrong with him now? Then it dawned on him.

"It's the device," he announced, seemingly out of the blue.

He realized he'd been standing stock still for several minutes, staring a nothing, his brain in overdrive.

"It is a device," Zelenka replied sarcastically, "Good job, Rodney."

"No, no, no!" Rodney shook his head, "I mean it's the device. That's why I can't think!"

"What are you talking about?" Sheppard demanded.

Sheppard had been standing out of the way, looking alternately bored and concerned by the science project. Unlike most of the people whose supervision Rodney had to tolerate, Sheppard could actually understand what was going on at some level.

"I can't think, I can't move, I can barely remember my own name," Rodney explained proudly, feeling he was at last on the track of something, at last doing something right, "It all started when the device went off. You were affected too."

"No I wasn't," Sheppard said.

"Yes you were," Rodney insisted.

"No. I wasn't."

"But you were."

"Alright. Fine. How?" Sheppard asked.

"You got spooked by this place. You couldn't wait to leave, even though we hadn't done what we came here to do and there was no evidence of danger."

"I did not," Sheppard said, "I still think this is a waste of time."

"Well you didn't think that this morning when we left Atlantis."

"Yes, Rodney, I did," Sheppard replied coolly.

"Then why did you agree to this mission?" Rodney asked.

"Because it seemed like it was a big deal to you," Sheppard said, "I decided to humor you. I did that, and now I'm done, but we're here anyway because Elizabeth thinks it's worth checking out."

"Oh," Rodney wasn't sure whether to feel good that Sheppard was willing to do that for him, or hurt that Sheppard didn't think it was actually important.

He didn't let that stall him out, and instead hurried on.

"The point is: something changed. In an instant, we were all different. It's the device. We need to shut it off. And we need to shut it off right now."

"That's what I have been saying," Zelenka asserted.

"Yes, but you didn't have a reason for why," Rodney shot back.

Zelenka stared at Rodney with what looked like an expression of disbelief. Then he suddenly turned and stalked away, throwing up his hands and letting out a stream of Czech that Rodney was pretty sure consisted entirely of epithets and insults. But languages had never interested him, except as a means of figuring out how to make alien technology do his bidding, so he couldn't be sure.

Rodney thought about waiting for Zelenka to come back, but then he decided to return his attention to the device. Then it struck him: maybe they didn't need to shut it off. Maybe they should just leave.

As he was starting to turn to Sheppard with this idea, fully aware that it was what Sheppard had wanted to do in the first place, he became aware of Zelenka breaking off his tirade mid-sentence. He turned around to find out why. The why was a squad's worth of people who looked suspiciously like the Genii, especially the weapons they had drawn and pointed at the team.

He started to go for his pistol as Sheppard had taught him to do, even though his reflexive response was to cringe and raise his hands. But a glance at Sheppard told him that it was too late, they'd been caught unaware and surrender was their only hope of survival. Before Rodney could change from trying to unholster his pistol to raising his hands, one of the newcomers fired a shot.

The shot was clearly meant for Rodney, but the shooter's aim was bad, and instead he clipped Zelenka in the side. The Czech dropped with a cry that tore through Rodney as surely as if he'd been the one who was shot. That bullet had been meant for him.

Hands raised, Rodney nonetheless moved forward and knelt beside Zelenka. Sheppard was shouting something along the lines of how that hadn't been necessary, but Rodney was paying attention only to the blood that was all but pouring out of Zelenka's side like a bucket that had been overturned.

All he could remember was putting pressure on the wound, so he did, but he was shaking badly, and the blood just kept on coming, and there was so much of it. Faintly, Rodney was aware that he was actually talking to Radek, babbling in fact, but he had no awareness of what he was saying, and there was no indication that Radek was paying attention either. He was too busy drowning in his own blood. Drowning on dry land. Drowning, one of the ways to die that Rodney was most afraid of. _Drowning_.

"Radek, you're okay. You're gonna be okay, you're gonna be fine," Rodney vaguely heard himself say, even though it didn't take a doctor to know that was patently untrue.

He didn't hear what Sheppard and the leader of the newcomers said to each other. He didn't dare look up from Radek, didn't dare divide his already compromised attention. Thus he wasn't aware of the enemy soldiers until they grabbed him by the arms and hauled him to his feet.

"No!" Rodney protested, struggling against them, "No! Radek! He'll die! Let me go!"

The soldiers grabbed him all the more firmly. They held him tightly enough that it hurt, and began to drag him away, despite his hysterical protests and futile thrashing.

"Radek!" Rodney strained against his captors, managing to keep Radek in view even as they turned him around and dragged him away from the clearing, the device, and the fallen Radek, "Radek!"

The blood pool was spreading. All Rodney could think was that there was more blood by the second. He knew exactly how much blood Radek could lose before he died. He knew that limit was fast approaching. His last view of Radek as he was dragged forcibly into the forest told him that the limit had been exceeded.

Radek Zelenka was dead.


	4. Chapter 4

"It doesna look like ye broke anything this time," Dr. Beckett pronounced after examining the fresh bruise on Lorne's side which he had received courtesy of Ronon's elbow during the altercation, "How do ye feel otherwise?"

"Church bells in my head, but otherwise I'm fine," Lorne lied.

In truth, everything hurt. It may have been his ribs that Ronon's elbow hit, but the hit had also slammed Lorne against the floor. Nobody else could hit quite like Ronon did. Even mostly pinned as he had been, he'd still managed to strike with enough force that Lorne had been seeing stars at the end of the fight. Evidently Dr. Beckett wasn't fooled and conducted a more thorough examination until he found a spot on the back of Lorne's head that made the Major flinch.

"This just isn't yer day," Beckett observed.

"No," Lorne agreed, "It's not."

Dr. Beckett went over to one of his cabinets and retrieved a card of pain meds, which he handed to Lorne, along with instructions, including the admonishment that he try to get some rest.

"I'm not hurt that bad, Doc," Lorne insisted, "Reed took the worst of it. How is he anyway?"

"Aye, he did at that," Beckett agreed, "Broken nose and mild concussion, but he'll be okay. Some of the others got a bit bashed around as well, but nothing broken, thank God."

Lorne nodded slightly, then looked past Beckett at where Sheppard's team had been arranged. The thoroughly sedated Ronon was back in bed, more heavily tied down than before, though the nurse standing near him looked rather nervous nonetheless.

"What do you suppose they're seeing that makes them think we're the enemy?" Lorne wondered, though he didn't really expect Beckett to have the answer.

"I'm not so sure that they do," Beckett said, "You saw for yerself that Ronon had no interest in us so long as we stayed out of his way. We weren't the enemy per say, we were just in his way."

Lorne nodded again, acknowledging this. Still, he couldn't help but wonder...

* * *

...Radek was dead. He was dead, and there was nothing Rodney could do about it. There was nothing he could do, and there was no time to grieve.

Rodney hadn't really grasped the details of who these people were or what they wanted, but they seemed to be some Genii offshoot, or people who got their weapons and supplies from the Genii. But what they wanted was the Atlantis 'Gate address. Moreover, they wanted someone's IDC. They wanted to repeat what Kolya had tried. They wanted to take Atlantis for themselves.

And they were willing to go to any length they had to in order to get it.

Somehow, they had known Rodney was the weakest link. Somehow, they seemed to know about his fear of drowning. While the others were locked up in a cell, Rodney was cut from the team and subjected to repeatedly being dunked in a bucket of icy water, his head held under until it felt like his lungs were ready to burst before he was yanked roughly out and questioned. He'd barely get his breath when they'd thrust him under again and he'd feel himself drowning, feel the panic setting in, feel his resolve crumbling. Just like before. Just like when Kolya had cut into him to get what he wanted.

Each time he was shoved back under, Rodney felt like he was drowning in more than just water. It was also guilt. Embarrassment. Shame. He wished he'd never discovered that damned device. From the moment he'd found it until now, he'd done nothing but mess up. He'd been wrong about everything. He'd been unable to do even something so minor as plugging in a tablet right. He couldn't do anything right. Hell, he couldn't even seem to be interrogated right, since it didn't seem like he was being given enough time above water to even decide whether or not he was going to break and tell them everything he knew, thus dooming both himself and his team as well as Atlantis to an undoubtedly cruel death.

He'd lost count of the number of times he'd been ducked under the water. He was starting to feel like he'd do anything, _anything in the world_ , if only they would stop drowning him. Even if all they did was kill him, at least then it would be over. That seemed suddenly like the most desirable thing in the world. He resisted that feeling, tried to fight it off, but it got harder every time he found himself under water again. His childhood terrors combined with his new fears, and were on the verge of overwhelming him if he didn't do something.

It came to him that he could give them a wrong address. They couldn't know until they stepped through. But unless he picked Planet Hell, they would live to tell the tale and start this all up again. He could give them the address, but the wrong IDC. But if they knew the address, they'd be one step closer to their goal. It was only a matter of time before they got the right IDC. There was no way they'd all go through the 'Gate together and die as a unit. But it might buy time. Time was always good to have more of when it came to figuring out how to save the day. If he was going to lie, he needed to do it soon, while he was still alert enough not to screw it up and reveal his deception.

They pulled him out again. He choked, gasped and barely got enough breath to scream "STOP! WAIT!" before they dunked him again. He felt his head go under, but he was quickly pulled out.

"Tell us what we want to know," said the man Rodney had come to recognize as the leader.

This man had looked on while two others held onto Rodney, alternately holding him under the water and pulling him out as they were told to. Rodney's wrists were tied behind him, the binds were biting into his flesh. He was also bound at the ankles, and being held on his knees in front of the water bucket he'd been repeatedly shoved into.

"I'll... I'll give you the address," Rodney said, "And my IDC. Just... just _stop_."

"Tell me," the man demanded, glaring at Rodney with cold eyes.

Rodney gave an incorrect 'Gate address, one which actually led to a known Wraith stronghold. He gave an IDC, one that had long since been locked out of the system, not that it mattered when they were going to the wrong address. Rodney was relieved he could actually remember a correct address, considering all the things he was having trouble remembering.

"Funny," the man said, "That's not the address your Colonel Sheppard gave before we cut off his head."

"Oh," Rodney squeaked involuntarily.

He knew they could be lying. Kolya was notorious for it. Kolya made promises he had no intention of keeping, threats he failed to carry out and routinely pretended to know more than he really did in order to encourage people to tell him what they knew. Sheppard would not have said anything. Sheppard might not even be dead. But then again... maybe he was. Rodney was no good at reading people, and the look in the eyes of the man standing over him was a pure mystery to him.

He knew they were willing to kill. They had already killed Radek, intending to kill Rodney himself. They would kill Sheppard, if they hadn't already. Rodney knew they would kill him too.

"Well... uh... Sheppard...," Rodney took a breath, and found his composure at last, accepting that there was no way to save himself, that there was only one thing he could do now, and that was to protect Atlantis at any cost, "Sheppard is a soldier. He's trained not to give information to the enemy. He can resist torture better than anyone I know. Me, I'm just a scientist. I belong in a lab. I'm scared of getting a... a splinter, let alone being tortured for information. Sheppard... is not afraid to die. Not if it means getting the job done. Which in this case would be resisting to the bitter end and even lying in the hopes that you'd send some of your soldiers off to some hellscape from which you'd never return, leaving that many fewer of you than before, which doesn't really work as a sentence, but-" he broke off with a gasp when one of his captors pinched the nerve cluster in his shoulder, "OW! What was that for!?"

"You might also be lying for the same reason," Leader remarked.

"Me? I'm not that brave," Rodney said, "Or that stupid. You'd figure out I was lying sooner or later, and then you'd just... just torture me more. I... don't really want that, as you might imagine."

For a moment, it looked almost like he'd finally succeeded at something. Leader looked thoughtful, then a little bit smug, pleased with himself. But before Rodney could breathe a sigh of relief, he heard the unmistakable whine of Wraith darts overhead.

"Friends of yours?" he inquired of Leader.

Leader had looked up at the ceiling in response to the sound, even though obviously he couldn't see through it. He turned and glared at Rodney.

"No," he growled.

"Oh," Rodney said, "That's too bad."

In an instant, the compound Rodney and the others had been taken to was alive with the sounds of gunfire. The ground shuddered as an explosion went off, followed by another and another. More gunfire. Shouting. Another explosion.

Leader and the two men who'd been holding Rodney fled towards a door, leaving Rodney where he was. Bound at the wrists and ankles in a kneeling position on the dirt floor, there was nothing Rodney could do, and no place for him to go. He could do nothing but watch.

It didn't exactly horrify him when the door his three captors had gathered around blew inward, though he did flinch at the noise and light that accompanied it. As the smoke curled up from the floor, a Wraith stepped through the newly created opening. The Wraith scowled at the three dead men, and then seemed to suddenly become aware of Rodney. The Wraith cocked his head, then turned slowly. His reptilian eyes lit up at sight of live prey, and he stalked in Rodney's direction.

"Oh I'm gonna die," Rodney breathed as he realized what was about to happen to him.

Absurdly, he heard the phrase 'out of the frying pan and into the fire' in his head.

The Wraith approached silent as death, and its hand descended towards him...

* * *

...Things had been quiet for a few minutes, though Beckett and his fellow doctors seemed quite busy with their work. So busy, in fact, that they hadn't actually dismissed Lorne. Not sure if they were done with him, but not wanting to make their job harder, he'd stuck around, planting himself in an out of the way corner where they could find him if they wanted him.

So it was that he was the first one to notice McKay's sudden distress. The jigging lines on the monitor McKay had been hooked to didn't mean much of anything to him, but the fact that McKay's body suddenly jerked didn't seem right.

"Uh... Doc..." he began hesitantly, but he never finished because there was suddenly the awful sound of the monitor letting the staff know McKay was in trouble, which caused an immediate flurry of distressed activity as Beckett and several others rushed to McKay's bedside, blocking Lorne's view.

They said various doctor phrases Lorne was only dimly familiar with, and repeated one phrase he knew only too well, which was, "We're losing him, we're losing him."

"Hang in there, Rodney," Lorne heard Beckett say quietly, before the doctor was shouting instructions at his staff, sending them scurrying hither and thither to fetch the items he intended to use in the fight to keep McKay alive.

Lorne found he was holding his breath.

He didn't much like McKay, but to lose the man wouldn't just be a blow to those who were inexplicably fond of him. McKay was a large part of the reason Atlantis was still standing, and that the people living here were still breathing. It was McKay's inventive mind, his ability to work even under tremendous pressure and come up with a winning solution despite tremendous odds against it that had saved them more than once. If McKay went, Atlantis would lose not just a valuable member of the team, but one of its main defenses against the Wraith. Moreover, if this thing could kill McKay, it could kill the others. Sheppard. Ronon. Teyla. Key players in the fight against the Wraith.

"C'mon, Rodney," Beckett said at one point, "Ye've got to breathe now. Dammit, Rodney!"

And then it was over. As suddenly as the activity had begun, it subsided. Immediately staff members dispersed to resume whatever they'd been doing when they were interrupted. Only Beckett lingered. For a moment, Lorne feared the worst. Then he saw the relieved look on Beckett's face and he let out his breath. McKay was still with them. He still lived and breathed. For the moment, that was enough.

Then the moment passed.

Beckett turned to Lorne and started towards him. Lorne knew before Beckett spoke.

"This is more serious than I thought," Beckett said, "Whatever's happening to them, it's killing them. Someone needs to get to that device, find out what it does. We need to stop this, or we may lose them."

Lorne nodded his understanding, and contacted Dr. Weir...

* * *

...Rodney wasn't sure what had happened.

One minute he was being fed on by a Wraith, in unimaginable agony. The next, he found himself lying on a bed in the infirmary in Atlantis, staring up at the ceiling. His chest was sore, his wrists felt numb, but otherwise he was surprisingly alive and in one piece.

That realization brought him sharply to alertness, as he struggled to look around the infirmary. He tried to sit up, but it was too hard, so he merely twisted his head around frantically, looking for the familiar face that he'd come to associate with safety, with things being okay or at least that they were going to be. He was surprised at the level of fear he felt as he was unable to locate who he was looking for.

He didn't even notice when a nurse announced that he was awake and went off to find Carson.

"Rodney, ye gave us a good scare," Carson said, startling Rodney, who had been looking the other way, still trying to find any sign of his team, and especially its leader.

"What? Oh. Yes, I'm sure," Rodney replied distractedly, "Um... where... where are the others?" he turned his head to look Carson right in the eye as he asked this, wanting the truth, nothing else.

"Radek was dead by the time we found him," Carson said, "I'm sorry."

"I know _that_ ," Rodney said dismissively, aware of how cold he sounded, "But what about Sheppard?"

Carson looked a little bit baffled, and in a moment it became clear why.

"Colonel Sheppard and the others are all fine," Carson said, "But, Rodney-"

"Radek is dead. Yes," Rodney felt awful for being relieved that Sheppard was alive when Zelenka was not, but he couldn't help it, "I was there, Carson. I saw what happened. I _caused_ it."

"Now, Rodney, I doubt that's true," Carson told him.

"I went for my pistol," Rodney explained, "Radek was in the way."

"Ye shot him?" Carson asked in disbelief.

"No! God, no!" Rodney shook his head, "But... they tried to shoot _me_. And hit Radek."

"Ach, Rodney, ye canna blame yerself for what someone else did," Carson admonished.

"Well obviously I can," Rodney replied, "Because I am."

"Ye were trained to defend yerself," Carson said.

"I know."

"Ye couldn't have known how touchy they'd be," Carson continued.

"I know."

"And ye couldna stifle the reflex Colonel Sheppard's spent years drillin' into ye."

"I know."

"If yer responsible, then Sheppard is too, for teachin' ye to use a pistol in the first place."

"By that logic, yes, I know," Rodney admitted, "But it doesn't feel that way."

Rodney knew he couldn't explain to Carson what he'd come to understand. Carson wouldn't believe it, and would probably try to talk him out of it. The plain and simple reality was that everything Rodney had attempted to do since he'd encountered that device had backfired. From the simple to the complex, he'd gotten the wrong answers, he'd dropped things, he'd forgotten how to make things work. He'd attempted to defend himself, and now Radek was dead. That was the logic. That was what had happened. Rodney needed to know... he had to find out... why.

Instead of pursuing that aloud, however, Rodney asked, "What... happened?"

"Well, I wasna involved in it," Carson explained, "But I'm told ye were overdue for a check in. Major Lorne and his team went after ye. What they found was you bein' fed on by a Wraith, which they killed. Apparently the Wraith and whoever had captured ye wer'na' on very good terms. The Major an' his team used the distraction to location and rescue you and the rest of yer team and brought them home."

"Oh," was all Rodney said.

"I didna get involved until I was informed that there might be wounded coming in," Carson said, "Sheppard came through first, carryin' ye over his shoulder. Ye looked dead, Rodney."

"I felt dead," Rodney replied distractedly.

He'd thought the device made Sheppard spooky, but now he realized that something else had been happening too. Sheppard, Ronon and even Teyla had been unusually short with Rodney, as had Zelenka once he was exposed to the device. Perhaps the pure aggression of the people who'd captured the team wasn't all natural as Rodney had assumed at the time. But why would the Ancients make a device that would provoke more aggression in humans? What possible purpose could that serve? And why hadn't it done the same thing to Rodney if that was how it functioned? Was he immune somehow? That didn't make any sense. Sheppard had the ATA gene and he'd clearly been affected. It couldn't be something to do with natural aggressive tendencies. Zelenka could be annoying, but he was the most harmless and patient human being Rodney had ever met, except possibly for Carson. If anyone was immune for that reason, it should have been Zelenka.

But was he immune though? Something was interfering with his ability to think properly. Something was throwing off what little physical coordination he had. Something was making him feel helpless and useless, and it wasn't just his repeated failures today. So maybe it affected him differently from the others. But why? It didn't make any sense. He needed more information.

"By the by," Carson said, and Rodney wondered how long he'd had the good doctor tuned out, "That device ye were tryin' to study is in yer lab now, for when yer well enough to take a look at it."

Rodney's eyes widened as horror flooded through him. They'd brought the device here!? After all Sheppard had said about wanting to leave it alone? When it was active and they didn't know what it did? Why would Elizabeth authorize bringing such a potentially dangerous object to Atlantis? The fear and anger and confusion all merged and prevented Rodney from asking any of these questions, and instead they solidified in his mind into a single, emphatic statement.

"I'm well enough _now_ ," Rodney said, "Help me out of this bed."

"Rodney..." Carson spoke warningly.

"Help me or else I'll roll off this bed and crawl out of here on my hands and knees if I have to," Rodney insisted, "It's your choice, but I'll tell you right now which I'd prefer."

Rodney knew that, if he'd really been seriously damaged and Carson was genuinely deeply concerned for his health, Carson would counter with a threat of strapping Rodney down or sedating him. But Rodney didn't think he was that sick, and evidently Carson didn't either, because he helped Rodney up.

"Ow, oh that hurts," Rodney yelped as he discovered that some of the muscles in his back had been strained at some point during his captivity and he'd been unaware of it until now.

"That's yer signal to stay in bed like the genius ye claim to be," Carson told him.

"No, that's _your_ signal to prescribe Tylenol," Rodney retorted.

"Or somethin' stronger an' ye stay in bed," Carson said.

"No," Rodney all but snapped, "I need my head clear. Or as clear as it can be. I need to get to my lab."

Finally on his feet with Carson's help, Rodney swayed uncertainly for a moment before locating his balance. He found he could stand up alright, it was just the getting up that seemed to be impossible on his own. Carson looked deeply worried and profoundly unhappy.

"I'll be fine," Rodney reassured him, even though he personally wasn't so sure.

What he was sure of was that he needed to figure out what that device did, and how to shut it off.


	5. Chapter 5

Dr. Weir wasn't happy about shipping out Lorne and those of his team that were still standing after the day they had already put in. But the plain and simple fact was that Lorne and his team had been to where the device was, and wouldn't have to waste time trying to follow tracks to the destination because they had already been there.

Having been near the device once before, and having experienced one of those pulses, Lorne and his team knew best what to expect, and might be able to recognize reality from hallucination now they knew to look out for it. A single experience had made them the best prepared.

Funny, Lorne didn't feel at all prepared.

He felt beat up and tired and had not entirely shaken off the unsettling experience of having been hit with the pulse the first time. Nor had it escaped his mind that he had just watched as McKay nearly died. McKay would have died had it not been for Beckett's team.

Dorsey and his team were once again on 'Gate duty, but Lorne had brought Edison's team also. The device seemed to have limited range, and Dr. Zelenka had a theory that its range was the bounds of the ruins. Edison and his team would be positioned on the ridge outside that range, so that they could intervene should the device go off and take down Lorne and his team. The theory was that the closer they were to the device, the longer it could knock them out for. If they were right next to it, it would keep them knocked out until the next pulse, which would of course keep them under.

Lorne didn't like heading out into the field on theories instead of facts, but he was only too aware of the danger the device posed, most especially to Sheppard's team. They weren't captured by any enemies, but Lorne considered that it was pretty much the same thing. Lorne knew the lengths Sheppard would go to to get his people back from the enemy. As Sheppard's second in command militarily speaking, Lorne knew he had to be just as ready to go to those lengths if necessary.

And that meant facing the device again, and the possibility of being hit by a pulse. He had no way of knowing what a second pulse might do to him, or to his team.

They were not going alone, however. Dr. Zelenka was accompanying them, with the intention of shutting down the device before they moved it. Zelenka had not seen the device, and any notes McKay might have made on it were on his tablet, which was still plugged into the device. Zelenka was essentially going in blind, and hoping to be able to disable the device before it disabled him.

"You sure you can do this?" Lorne asked when they reached the ridge.

Like most of his kind, Dr. Zelenka looked very out of his element in the field. But Lorne knew looks could be deceiving. Zelenka had no heart for violence, but he could remain utterly focused on the task at hand under incredible pressure, and he was surprisingly courageous when he needed to be. Because Zelenka tended to vocalize little, or at least little in language Lorne understood, he preferred working with the Czech scientist to dealing with McKay.

"Do I have a choice?" Zelenka asked.

Lorne simply looked at him. Zelenka nodded, seemingly more to himself than Lorne.

"Yes, I thought not," Zelenka answered himself with a shrug, "Well, better we wait for the device to go off before we approach it."

"Why?" Lorne asked, realizing as he spoke that it was a stupid question.

"If the device is timed to go off at precise intervals, it will give me more time to work with."

"And if it goes off because of proximity or something like that?" Lorne inquired.

"Then we will just have to do things the dangerous way," Zelenka replied.

As it turned out, they didn't have long to wait. From up on the ridge, it was apparent that Zelenka's theory was correct. From there, they heard the whine and saw the air shimmer briefly, but they remained unaffected. At least, Lorne thought uneasily, unaffected as far as they knew. But how could he tell or be sure? He mentally ran through the names of the people on his team. He ran into no difficulty. He expanded his mental search to include more members of the Atlantis expedition, the address of the planet they were on and other things he should easily be able to remember. He felt like everything was there. But as he was the only one to have mentioned not being able to remember things, he had no way of knowing whether or not that counted as proof of anything.

"Shall we?" Zelenka asked.

Lorne nodded, and led the way down to the ruins. He stopped his team some distance from the device near the edge of the ruins, but Lorne himself stayed right with Zelenka. He could tell the man was terribly frightened of what the device might do to him, and Lorne hoped his presence might reassure Zelenka somewhat.

"You do not have to be so close," Zelenka told him, "There is nothing you can do to help."

"I'm staying here as long as you do," Lorne replied, "The sooner you get to work, the sooner that device turns off and we can all go home, yeah?"

"Yes," Zelenka agreed with a nod, "Yes, of course."

As Zelenka got to work, Lorne stood by, unable to do anything except hope nothing went wrong.

* * *

"Uh-oh."

It was the first sound Zelenka had made in an hour that hadn't been a string of epithets delivered in incomprehensible Czech and aimed at the device, which was presumably proving to be more difficult to understand and/or control than Zelenka had anticipated.

Lorne had at one point asked Zelenka if everything was alright, but the man had merely waved him away impatiently without looking up. Lorne had taken that to mean that Zelenka was too busy doing science things to be bothered with answering someone who probably wouldn't understand the answer anyway, and took it as his cue to back off and let Zelenka work.

But 'uh-oh' was a phrase Lorne understood only too well, and it immediately concerned him.

"Uh-oh? What uh-oh?" Lorne asked, coming to stand beside Zelenka and looking at the screen of the computer that had been plugged into the device.

"There is a power build up within the device," Zelenka said.

"Can you stop it?" Lorne asked, understanding that a power build up likely meant a pulse going off.

"Not safely," Zelenka replied.

"Then we need to get out of its range," Lorne decided.

"That may not be possible," Zelenka said hesitantly.

"What? Why not?" Lorne was pretty sure he remembered Zelenka saying it had a range.

"Because I am no longer convinced the device has a range. At least, not one that is likely to make any difference to us," Zelenka replied.

"But you said it only hit the ruins," Lorne protested, "When we got here, we were safe enough on the ridge, right?"

"Yes, when we got here. But based upon the readings I have been taking, that is because -shortly after each pulse- it runs a scan of the area. At the time you were hit, it had detected only Sheppard's team, and so confined itself to the area where they were in order to save power."

"Why did it go off when we arrived at all then?" Lorne wanted to know, "Nobody had been here in over an hour."

"Likely a standard operating procedure. Like certain Earth-based technologies, the program must be periodically executed to ensure the device does not malfunction. When it detects nothing, it keeps the pulse small. But this power build up... a pulse would reach to the Stargate."

"Could it get _through_ the Stargate if it was active?" Lorne inquired.

Zelenka shook his head, "I do not think so."

"How much time do we have?" Lorne asked.

"Very little," Zelenka replied.

The whole time he'd been answering Lorne's questions, Zelenka had been packing up. Lorne had no interest in Zelenka's backpack. The little scientist would likely move slowly enough without it.

"Leave it," Lorne said, "We'll come back for it if we can. Go, go, go."

Zelenka obeyed Lorne's nudge, and took off at a run. Lorne followed him, purposely staying right with Zelenka instead of overtaking him. At the same time, Lorne spoke to his team, Edison's team on the ridge and Dorsey's team at the 'Gate through his activated earwig, instructing them to get through the 'Gate. He gave the order nobody on the Atlantis team ever wanted to hear: _Don't wait for us. Go now_.

Zelenka was surprisingly fast and agile for a physicist, at least in comparison with most of the physicists Lorne had come to know during his time in Atlantis. At the same time, Lorne was tired and bruised, and he felt an ache in his ribs when he sucked in the deep breaths that were necessary for running. Even so, Lorne was faster than Zelenka, and could easily have overtaken him if he'd been so inclined. He knew it, and so did Zelenka.

"Go," Zelenka panted, "You can reach the Stargate in time. I don't think I can."

"I'm not leavin' you, Doc," Lorne replied, "We'll make it even if I have to carry you."

Lorne was glad the path back to the Stargate was so conveniently clear. It was too far back to the Stargate to get there at a dead sprint. But they were able to move much more quickly because there was a trail. Lorne had also traveled it several times today, and was confident he knew every up and down, every twist and turn of the path. It flitted through his mind that it wasn't a man-made path, because there'd been no sign of people. He wondered vaguely what sort of creature cleared paths like this. On Earth, elephants were well known for blazing trails through the forests of India that were used readily by other animals and the local people as well. Had elephants been brought to other planets, or was this some alien life form the size of a bus? Lorne dismissed the question as soon as he'd thought of it.

It didn't matter now. All that mattered was getting to the Stargate, and fast.

* * *

Astoundingly, they made it to the Stargate. Dorsey's team was long gone, as was Edison's. Lorne's team had wanted to wait for him, but via earwig he had ordered them to go, knowing he was several minutes behind them with Zelenka. On reaching the 'Gate, he was relieved to see his team had done as he'd told them. For the first time since the run began, Lorne broke his position just behind and a little to Zelenka's right. Lorne went straight for the DHD, and had completed the dialing sequence by the time Zelenka got close. Lorne paused just long enough to send his IDC.

Before he'd broken from Zelenka to activate the Stargate, he'd told the man to not wait, to go through the instant Lorne's IDC went through. There was no time for radio contact. Lorne didn't know how much time they had left, but he'd gathered that seconds counted from the look of fear Zelenka had given him before they started back for the 'Gate.

Zelenka was through, and Lorne had left the DHD. But he never made it to the Stargate.

The sound was less like a ringing this time, and more like the thunder of millions of insect wings making a steady droning noise, only higher pitched. Lorne felt the impact of the pulse as a physical blow against his back and he fell, just a few feet shy of his goal...

* * *

...Lorne had the impression that he'd been unconscious for quite some time. The sun had been up when he'd last been aware, but it was dark now. The temperature had dropped precipitously. And where the skies had before been clear and blue, now it was raining. Low thunder rumbled ominously overhead.

Violent shivers ran through Lorne as he slowly sat up and looked around. Rain water ran down his face and stung his eyes as he took in the empty clearing around the Stargate, or as much of it as he could see in the dark. He spotted a body lying near the 'Gate itself.

Feeling aching protest in every bone, Lorne shakily stood and made his way over to where the body lay. Even from a few feet away in the dark, he was able to recognize the diminutive Dr. Zelenka. He hurried over and knelt beside Zelenka and checked for a pulse. He found no pulse at Zelenka's neck, and the skin there was cold to the touch.

For a moment, Lorne entertained the notion that this might be a hallucination. But he really didn't _remember_ Zelenka making it to the Stargate, and he knew the device had already nearly killed before now. It wouldn't be the first time that the stronger bodies of soldiers had won out against the generally less physical and healthy scientists. Some part of Lorne felt like there was something important and obvious he was overlooking, in the same way he'd been unable to remember the name of one of the people on his team... but he couldn't think what it.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized he just didn't want to accept that Zelenka was dead, that Lorne himself had been left on this planet with the device, undoubtedly because it was clear that sending yet another team through to fiddle with it was too big a risk.

Something out in the night growled, a fierce and terrible sound Lorne did not recognize, though there was something eerily familiar about it, and he felt he should know it at once.

He didn't get time to puzzle it out, because the inner ring of the Stargate suddenly began to spin. Lorne scrambled back from the Stargate, drawing his pistol on the off-chance that something unfriendly was about to come through it. The sequence completed, the Stargate activated, and Lorne heard a voice in his ear. It was Dr. Weir.

" _Major, can you hear me?"_

"Yes, Ma'am," Lorne replied, "What happened?"

" _We've been trying to contact you periodically for some time now,"_ Dr. Weir said, _"We knew that you would be waking up again eventually, because you have the ATA gene."_

"So do Sheppard and McKay," Lorne said.

" _Major, some things have happened since you were awake last, and I'd love to bring you up to speed, but I'm afraid we haven't time,"_ Dr. Weir told him.

Before she could continue, a new voice intervened. It was Dr. McKay.

" _Look, Lorne, we're glad you're alive and all, but now we need you to do something,"_ McKay waited for no acknowledgment, _"In layman's terms, the device links to the people it attacks. So long as it is active, it will continue to affect them negatively. Once established, the effect can spread like a disease from the people originally afflicted to those around them. Now, so far it seems that anyone with the ATA gene can recover. Sheppard and I are fine. However, Ronon and Teyla... well... they didn't make it."_

"Zelenka is dead," Lorne informed him.

" _We figured as much,"_ McKay replied coldly, then went on, _"Now, I'd go back myself and try to deactivate the device, but that's not possible for a couple of reasons. One reason is that I was given the ATA gene, not born with it. My resistance is consequently much less than yours is. If I go back, I'll probably be dead before I can finish my work. And we can't bring anyone back who goes through, because the pulse travels much more strongly through an incoming wormhole, and that would cut down on the time we have to work with."_

"So what are we going to do?" Lorne asked, not really understanding any of the facts McKay was giving him, but accepting them as reality (primarily because it was McKay).

" _You're going to figure out how to turn the device off,"_ McKay said simply.

"Me? I don't know anything about Ancient technology. I can barely even read Ancient."

" _That's why you're going to relocate the device, bring it closer to the Stargate, so you can stay in radio range of the Stargate while I talk you through the process."_

"You want me to move the device? That thing must weigh a thousand pounds. How am I supposed to move it?" Lorne asked.

" _Well that would be the first problem we have to solve,"_ McKay answered impatiently...

* * *

...Dr. Zelenka tumbled through the Stargate. He'd made a literal dive for it, and when he landed he rolled clear of it and looked over his shoulder. From her place in the control room, Elizabeth found herself holding her breath. Everyone was through. Everyone except Lorne.

Elizabeth knew as well as anyone that there was nothing that could have delayed Lorne's arrival through the Stargate. There were no native peoples on the planet, and no invaders such as the Wraith. There was only one reason Lorne hadn't followed Zelenka in a matter of seconds. Elizabeth crossed her arms in front of her, not wanting to believe, but knowing the truth.

The Stargate deactivated. There was no sign of Lorne.

Elizabeth let out her breath and looked at the floor for a moment, allowing herself a too brief second of emotion before she had to collect herself and be the unshakable leader of Atlantis.

She looked up in time to see Zelenka slowly standing. Zelenka was shaking as he looked back at the deactivated Stargate, evidently not all the way to realizing what had happened.

Elizabeth descended the stairs and met Zelenka. She had already asked the returning teams, but none of them knew. None of them had been told why they were leaving, only that they were to go immediately.

"What happened out there?" Elizabeth asked of Zelenka.

"What happened?" Zelenka shook his head, "I should have... figured it out... sooner."

"Figured what out?" Elizabeth asked, a trifle impatient.

Zelenka didn't answer immediately, and she realized this was because he was struggling to catch his breath, as if he'd been running, just as Edison and Lorne's team had been when they got back. Only of course Zelenka was breathing harder and it took him longer to recover his breath enough to speak.

"There is a reason that this seemingly perfectly suitable planet has no human life."

"The device?" Elizabeth inquired.

Zelenka nodded, "Whoever built those ruins. It killed them. It killed them all..."

* * *

...Rodney immediately took over the lab in his customary fashion, shooing people away from the device, which had been planted in the middle of the room like a table centerpiece.

"And who's stupid idea was this?" Rodney demanded, gesturing to the device and referring of course to the fact that it was here, active and in the middle of the city where it had the opportunity to do untold damage, "Wait, never mind. I don't want to know. Whoever had this idea, know that you're an idiot and should never do this again. Moving on, what do we know so far about this thing?"

There was a dead silence in the room.

"Nobody? Nothing?" Rodney asked, then added sarcastically, "Well good job, then. What are we paying you people for?"

Reflexively, he looked around for Zelenka, but checked himself just before he called out the man's name and demanded to know where he was. Rodney already knew the answer to that. Zelenka would never be coming when called again. Never. That was surprisingly hard to take.

"Okay, let's get to work then, before this thing goes off again."

That was easier said than done. The first thing Rodney did was pick up a scanner and then drop it on the floor, successfully shattering it. The next thing he did was trip over the cable of a computer someone had plugged into the device, which resulted in unplugging the device and warping the end of the cable. Both things were fixable, but they were embarrassing.

That was something Rodney could live with. But it only got worse. As had happened on the planet, Rodney persistently misread the information on his computer screen and nothing worked right for him. But the worst part came when he thought he'd determined where the off-switch was. There were some faces of disagreement and doubt after Rodney's lengthy two hour performance of consistently failing at everything, but nobody dared to say anything and just stood by while he pushed the button.

An alarm immediately went off on one of the laptops, and Rodney knew he'd made a huge mistake.

He knew because that was the alarm that went off when Atlantis began broadcasting a distress signal to the universe, one that the Wraith could detect and use to track them down.

By his actions, Rodney had just rung the dinner-bell, calling the Wraith to Atlantis...


	6. Chapter 6

"I am no longer confident of being able to predict the limitations of the device," Dr. Zelenka's report when Elizabeth called together a meeting of the various department heads (or the substitutes) was short and to the point, "What I can confirm is that -from what we have seen- anyone on the planet hit by a full pulse would not regain consciousness before the next pulse hits. Considering the device is active, it is very possible that the original designers miscalculated, turned it on and ended up killing themselves thousands of years ago, along with any people living on the planet."

"Do you have any idea what the device is actually supposed to be for?" Elizabeth asked.

Zelenka shook his head, "None. Because of what we have seen of Ancient technology and experiments in the past, I am inclined to believe that this device is not functioning as intended. But... I don't know what the intent was. Perhaps if I knew that, I would be able to deactivate the device, or at least come up with some way to defend against it."

"Dr. Beckett," Elizabeth turned to Carson, "Any progress?"

"Well, yes and no," Carson answered hesitantly, "Aside from that first instance with Rodney, we've had no instances of seizure or cardiac arrest, and have taken measures to prevent it from happening again. Unfortunately, the drug dosage is a lot higher than I'd consider to be safe over a long period, and I dinna have any idea as to when or if they'll wake up on their own. I really need to know more about what the device does."

"What about Major Lorne?" Edison was filling in as security chief for the moment, "He's still on the planet."

"Aye, and he'll probably be hit by the pulse again if we dinna get 'im out," Carson put in.

"Dr. Zelenka?" Elizabeth didn't bother to complete the question.

"I cannot be certain," Zelenka said, "But I do still believe the device is on some kind of timer. If we time a rescue properly, there should be little to no risk."

"My team's ready," Edison volunteered, "Any time we get a go."

Elizabeth was silent for a moment. It would do no good to send a team through and find that the device could hit them at any time. Then they would have five people unconscious off-world. If all the reports were accurate, repeated exposure to the pulse would eventually kill. Here in Atlantis, Carson was able to fight for the lives of the patients. But off-world, their chances of survival dropped to nothing. But that only applied if the device pulse was _not_ predictable. Zelenka seemed to think it was. She did want to get Lorne back, but Zelenka had been wrong about how the device worked before.

"Sheppard seems to be the least affected," Carson said, "It's possible the ATA gene provides some ability to resist. It couldna' have been the Ancients intent to kill themselves."

"What about Rodney?" Elizabeth asked.

"I hate to say it," Carson replied, "But Rodney's health is far from the best to begin with, leavin' him at a clear disadvantage to the others, physically speaking."

"And this is relevant how?" Edison asked, annoyed at the change of subject.

"It means there's more time to make a decision before Major Lorne is in serious jeopardy," Elizabeth replied, "Thank you, Dr. Beckett."

"Aye," Carson nodded slightly, though he didn't look too happy with himself.

Elizabeth understood. Carson was a doctor, and he took his oath to do no harm extremely seriously. Unfortunately, very often on this expedition, it was necessary to pick one harm over the other, because none at all was not an option. Even though in this instance Carson was only giving Elizabeth information and the final call was hers, it was obvious he was uncomfortable with presenting leaving Lorne as he was for now as an option. It just didn't feel right. Elizabeth understood this only too well, because now that was her problem as well. She didn't like the idea of leaving Lorne, but she also didn't much care for the possibility that an attempt to rescue him would only wind up with more people getting hurt and no one being saved from anything...

* * *

...The city was overrun.

Rodney had abandoned work on the device and moved to trying to protect the city. The Wraith were not fooled by the cloak, and the shields weren't strong enough to hold against a sustained assault. Rodney had been given almost three days to work with before the Wraith were upon them, but it didn't seem to matter. Nothing he did worked. He could not shut off the device. He could not muffle the distress signal. He could do nothing to protect the city. In fact, when he thought he'd hit on an idea to strengthen the shields, he wound up taking them out entirely, leaving Atlantis wide open to attack.

The death and destruction which rained down on Atlantis as a result was immeasurable. With puddle jumpers as her only defense, Atlantis deployed all of her ships. Sheppard had survived just long enough to take one of the hive ships with him by flying right into it. Major Lorne had followed shortly, taking out a kamikaze dart making a run for the control tower with his own jumper. Every jumper was down, every pilot was dead. The _Daedalus_ had been destroyed with all hands in the first assault.

All around Rodney, the people he knew and worked with every day were dying, and there was nothing he could do. In fact, everything he tried to do had only made things worse. A strategic suggestion he'd made to the _Daedalus_ had resulted in her swift demise. The shields were down because of him. He'd been pulled from puddle jumper duty to try and restore the shields and all he'd done was kill what little weapons Atlantis had to defend herself.

The city was on fire. She was burning. Atlantis was dying. And all Rodney could do was watch.

The Wraith were everywhere. The darts were scooping people up, but the Wraith were also stalking the halls. They'd killed everyone that got in their way. Dr. Weir had ordered an evacuation, sending all nonessential personnel through the Stargate to the Alpha Site.

"Rodney," the sound of Dr. Weir's voice brought him from the stupor that he'd fallen into, gazing fixedly at the monitors in the control room without any real comprehension.

Numbly, Rodney looked at her. She didn't have to say it, he knew. Atlantis could not fall into the hands of the Wraith. Her technology, her information... she could not fall. Now overrun, without anyone or anything to defend her, there was only one way to save Atlantis. And that was to destroy her.

"It's time," Dr. Weir said gently.

"Oh," Rodney replied.

It took two people with the proper clearance to set the self destruct. With the loss of so many, Dr. Weir and Rodney were the only ones left who could do it.

Reluctantly, Rodney left his seat and joined Dr. Weir at the control panel they had rigged to serve as the self destruct. Dr. Weir nodded for Rodney to go first. He felt a moment of hesitation, uncertainty, an awareness of something... something that wasn't right. Then he shook it off and input the code.

At least... that's what he tried to do.

"It's not working," Rodney said, "Why isn't it working?"

A shuddering bang issued from somewhere and Rodney flinched. It was the sound of the Wraith trying to break into the locked-down control tower. They were blasting at the doors. They knew. They had to get through the doors and stop Dr. Weir and Rodney or they would lose the city, which was too great a prize. They were willing to batter her, to break her, but they wanted her for themselves.

"Rodney!" Dr. Weir warned as another bang made the floor vibrate.

"I'm trying!" Rodney cried, clearing his code and reentering it, "The computer isn't accepting it!"

"Well fix it, Rodney," Dr. Weir said in her typical calm way.

"I'm working on it," Rodney replied.

He did a quick system's diagnostic, trying to find where the hang up was. There was a fresh volley of deafening noise outside the control room every second, but all Rodney could hear was the thunder of his own pulse in his ears while the diagnostic seemed to take forever. Everything seemed to check out.

As the doors down in the 'Gate room gave way and the Wraith burst through, Rodney realized that the problem was him. He'd been entering an outdated code. He sprang to action and entered the code. But he was too late. From the floor below, a Wraith shot up at them, and hit Dr. Weir.

Elizabeth fell.

Rodney stood paralyzed in disbelief, staring down the barrel of a Wraith's gun. The Wraith fired...

* * *

...The meeting was suddenly interrupted by Carson receiving a message via the earwig.

"I'm sorry," Carson told Elizabeth, "I've got to go."

"Carson?" Elizabeth inquired.

"I've no time," Carson replied, already on his way out the door.

Looks of concern were exchanged between the people in the room. There were very few people who could get away with that. Carson, as the CMO for Atlantis, was one of the extreme few people who had the privilege of simply blowing Elizabeth (and indeed anyone in Atlantis) off. It wasn't often that Carson used that privilege.

Elizabeth quickly adjourned the meeting for the moment. The various department heads scattered to fulfill their duties, knowing that the meeting would reconvene when Elizabeth deemed it appropriate to do so, and that in the meantime they should continue to do their jobs.

Elizabeth followed Carson.

In the infirmary, she discovered why he'd brushed her off without pause. This time it wasn't just Rodney that was in trouble. Sheppard's entire team were all in various states of medical distress, and there hadn't been enough medical staff on hand to handle all four of them going at once. Carson had returned to work immediately, and called in a couple of off-shift doctors who were closest to help deal with the crisis. At least one of them arrived wearing a bathrobe and slippers, because he worked the night shift and had just gone to bed when Carson called him back.

Elizabeth loved Atlantis. She loved working here. She loved living here. She loved this place and its people and the important work they did. But all of that came at a price. A part of that price which was particularly painful was having to watch helplessly at times like this, unable to do anything but stand out of the way, useless and afraid for the lives of her people.

Colonel Sheppard, who had been so ill-prepared for the trip to Atlantis and his subsequent promotion, but who had accepted it with grace and good humor in spite of the tremendous pressure he hadn't signed on to endure. Ronon, who despite having lost everything, had managed to find it in himself to stay and to serve Atlantis as one of her finest warriors. Teyla, a leader to her people who had made the agonizing decision to be separated from them and fight alongside these strangers from Earth. And Rodney, who's self-centered arrogance concealed a vulnerable and insecure personality, one who had displayed astounding courage when it was absolutely necessary.

These were the lives Elizabeth could do nothing to save. These were her people that she could not protect. These were the people who routinely gave it there all for Atlantis, for the mission... and for her.

She did not even want to contemplate what she would do without any one of them...

* * *

… " _Look, it's not that hard,"_ McKay was saying for what seemed like the hundredth time, _"You need to reroute the power, bypassing the primary source. Just... just pull the crystal out and we'll try again."_

After a lengthy period of activity that ultimately proved to be fruitless, McKay had been the one who eventually figured out they could extend the radio range of the MALP, allowing him to control it from Atlantis, using its camera to look at the device and its transmitter to relay messages to Lorne. They didn't have to bring the device to Atlantis, they just had to bring Atlantis to the device. It was such an obvious solution Lorne couldn't believe he'd failed to consider it.

The cold, the dark and the rain were not helping. Lorne's shivering was getting worse, and he had difficulty keeping hold of the crystals that made up the majority of the device's interior.

Nearly every advanced alien race had their own version of power crystals, which did everything an Earth-based computer did only better, plus some other things Lorne didn't even want to understand. The thing they had in common was that all the crystals of a certain origin seemed to look the same, and Lorne felt like he was trying to play chess with identical pieces, only he didn't know the rules and so could not even begin to guess which piece was which based upon its placement on the board.

"You keep saying it's easy, Doc," Lorne said in a calm voice, keeping his mounting frustration and panic out of it, "But if it was so easy, don't you think I'd've done it by now?"

" _Well obviously not,"_ McKay retorted impatiently, _"But that's hardly my fault. I'm the one who figured out how to bring the MALP up here so I could supervise. I've given you every instruction you need, and so far all I've seen is_ you _screwing it up."_

Lorne took a breath, and decided not to respond to that. He really didn't need to be berated right now, and he didn't appreciate being yelled at. But the fact was, he should have been able to do this. McKay's instructions were helpful and they did make sense, he just couldn't seem to carry them out properly. He kept forgetting them, getting the order wrong and misplacing the key components.

He'd already asked why they couldn't just blow the damned thing up, and McKay had given him a lengthy scientific explanation he didn't understand that basically boiled down to the people linked to the device being killed if it wasn't deactivated properly.

" _Lorne,"_ a new tone entered McKay's voice. It sounded almost... well, contrite, _"Look, Major, I'm sorry. Elizabeth went down a minute ago, and with Zelenka gone... well... things are... they're kind of falling apart here. So if you could... could just keep focused... please. I uh... there are... things I need to be doing."_

"Yeah," Lorne replied, nodding even though he was out of the MALP's camera view, "Okay."

A moment later, McKay was yelling at him again. But this time Lorne wasn't annoyed. This time he got why. The people of Atlantis were dying, and they were running out of time...

* * *

… "Well, we've still got all four of 'em," an exhausted sounding Carson reported to Elizabeth, "But I canna say as I want that again. We were lucky. Very lucky."

Lucky was not a word you ever wanted to hear in relation to medical matters.

"Thanks to the closer monitoring, we were able to get everyone mobilized quickly and efficiently," Carson continued after a brief pause, "But it was touch an' go there for a bit. And now we know the drugs we were using were no help at all; it's back to the drawing board with that."

Elizabeth knew what Carson wasn't adding. There was only so much he could do to keep their hearts going. He could only do so much. Sooner or later, the strain of it would kill them. Restarting a heart wasn't as small a matter as it looked on TV. Life saving drugs also often had negative side effects as well, especially when used repeatedly or in quantity.

"There was no advance warning," Carson went on, "No indication. One minute everything was peaceful as ye please, next it was near death. I canna explain it."

"And the same thing will start happening to Major Lorne," Elizabeth said.

"Aye, very likely," Carson nodded, "Though I canna say for sure when exactly it might happen."

Elizabeth nodded. She was thinking. A moment later, she had made her decision.

"Lt. Edison," Elizabeth said into her earwig, "You have your go. I want you and your team in the 'Gate room in the next fifteen minutes."

" _Yes, Ma'am,"_ came the curt reply.

"Dr. Weir," Carson said, "Might I suggest sending as few people over there as possible, as we've no idea what might happen to them after they arrive? There's no sense sending an entire team when two people can get the same job done, is there?"

Elizabeth nodded, "Agreed."

As she left the infirmary, hurrying to the control room, she contacted Edison and advised him that she only wanted two people to go through. She would have preferred to send one, but it was easier and faster to transport an unconscious person with two people and time counted.

Zelenka met her in the control room, and added advice of his own.

"Based off of the readings I took and what I've managed to extrapolate," Zelenka said, "I advise you to wait another two minutes. The pulse should go off in that time. It will give the team more time to dial back in and bring Major Lorne home. Ideally it should not matter, but..."

"Better safe than sorry," Elizabeth finished when Zelenka trailed off.

Zelenka shrugged and then nodded. Elizabeth relayed this to Edison, telling him to wait. She didn't like the idea of purposely waiting for another pulse and letting Lorne be hit by that, but it didn't seem much like she had a choice...

* * *

...Rodney was astonished to find himself still alive.

He was even more surprised to realize he wasn't in Atlantis. It didn't take him very long to realize that he was somehow at the Alpha Site. It puzzled him, because the last thing he remembered was doing the Pegasus Galaxy equivalent of going down with the ship alongside Dr. Weir.

Rodney started trying to sit up, but found himself entangled in some sort of medical apparatus. IV, heart monitor, other things he'd never bothered to learn the names of, were all stuck to him.

"Whoa, whoa, easy, take it easy," a feminine voice reassured him, and a pretty doctor appeared in his field of view and gently placed her hands on his shoulders, encouraging him to stay lying down, "You're alright. You're safe now, at the Alpha Site. Well, it's the Pegasus Base now, but... well."

"I know you," Rodney said, his brow furrowing, "I've seen you before."

"Yes, you probably have," she agreed with a nod, "I'm Dr. Keller."

"Oh. Oh yes... Carson mentioned you," Rodney said, "Carson... is Carson here?"

A shadow of pain crossed her face, and Rodney knew the answer before she replied, "He was killed when the Wraith stormed the infirmary in Atlantis. I'm sorry, I know he was a friend of yours."

"Yes..." Rodney agreed quietly, averting his eyes, "He was... wasn't he," he shook his head, refusing to let the grief take hold, at least until he understood the situation, "Not that I'm not happy to be here -and also alive- but... um... how did I get here?"

"Why don't you tell me the last thing you remember, and I'll try to go from there," Dr. Keller suggested.

"Well... uh... Atlantis had been... had been overrun by Wraith. The _Daedalus_ was destroyed, the shield was down, the Wraith were flooding the city. The city was... was burning. Elizabeth... Dr. Weir... she had everyone evacuate. But... we stayed. We had to... to activate the self-destruct. Only... only we never got that far. She's dead, isn't she?"

Dr. Keller nodded sadly, "I'm afraid so."

"Oh god..." Rodney closed his head and drew a shuddering breath.

"And you don't remember anything after that?" Rodney shook his head in answer to the question, "Nothing of the past six months?"

"Six months?" Rodney repeated weakly, "It's been six months?"

Dr. Keller nodded, and there was sympathy in her voice when she explained, "Six months ago, Atlantis was taken over by Wraith. At first nobody knew that Atlantis had survived, or that you had. It didn't take long for it to become apparent that, not only had the Wraith taken Atlantis, they had someone with the ATA gene working with them. Colonel Carter was the one who figured it out."

"Sam?" Rodney said slowly, "Is she here?"

"No," Dr. Keller replied, "She was killed trying to take Atlantis back from the Wraith. But the team she put together was successful in rescuing you."

"I... I was the one helping the Wraith? Why would I do that?" Rodney asked.

"I'm afraid I can't answer that," Dr. Keller said with a shake of her head, "But what I do know is they didn't treat you very well."

"I.. I don't remember any of that," Rodney said, slowly shaking his head.

"That's not surprising. It's very possible that the trauma you endured was so extreme you completely blocked it from your mind. It was probably the only way for you to cope," Dr. Keller told him, "But nobody blames you for it. The Wraith tortured you for six months, and that was right after all your friends had died, your city was taken over... nobody could blame you for breaking under that kind of pressure."

" _I_ blame me," Rodney answered back coldly, "It sounds like Sam's dead because of me. How many other people have I gotten killed and don't remember? No wait, never mind, apparently I don't want to know. But I do want to know... was Atlantis destroyed? Did that happen at least?"

"No," Dr. Keller replied, "Colonel Carter... she had to decide between saving you and destroying Atlantis. She couldn't do both."

"So the Wraith still have Atlantis," Rodney said, "Does that mean..." he couldn't voice the thought, it was altogether too awful to even contemplate.

"The war with the Wraith has moved to our galaxy," Dr. Keller answered patiently, "Earth is under attack as we speak. Now you're awake, we could use your help."

Rodney started to say something, but thought better of it.

"No," he replied instead, "No, you don't. You see... Atlantis fell because of me. Because of my arrogance. It was my mistake... my series of mistakes... that led her to fall. Earth is... is better off if I just stay out of things."

"Dr. McKay," Dr. Keller said, then softened her voice, "Rodney... you're one of all-too-few people left with the ATA gene. You know more about the Wraith, their tactics, their technology, even their biology, than anyone else alive. You're a genius in your field. Rodney... Earth _needs_ you."

"No," Rodney repeated firmly, "No, it doesn't."


	7. Chapter 7

"How is he?" Elizabeth asked.

"Healthier than the others, I'll give him that," Carson replied, "But I can't say for how long. He was not exposed for as long as Sheppard's team, and it was a much greater distance, but without knowing how the device works, I shouldn't like to guess what difference that might make in the long run."

Elizabeth nodded. This time Carson had come to her office to give his report, which was that of a currently stable situation. But it had already been demonstrated twice that the apparent stability was a deception. Carson had explained that there were none of the usual warnings, such as rising heart rate to indicate trouble. One second they were steady, the next they were dying.

"I have to admit it's a wee bit frustrating," Carson said, "To have all of this knowledge, and all this technology, yet there's really nothing I can do to help them. I'm a healer, Dr. Weir, but I can't find a way to heal these people."

"You're doing everything you can," Elizabeth reassured him, "Given time, I'm confident that someone on this team will figure out what to do. Even if it's not you that finds the solution, you're still giving whoever does the time they need to do it. Right now, that's all that matters."

"Aye," Carson's single word sentence agreed, but his eyes were still troubled.

Late at night when sleep refused to come, sometimes Elizabeth found herself wondering just what she and her people were doing out here. They were literally the best and brightest in their fields of expertise. She had hand picked these people from countless candidates. Some of them were her second or third choice because her first choice had either refused to sign the nondisclosure agreement allowing them to learn about the Stargate program or they had been too timid to undertake the adventure to Atlantis. Carson was not one of those people. He had been her first choice. The fact that he had the ATA gene had actually been something of an unexpected bonus. And yet, even the most brilliant human doctor in two galaxies seemed to routinely be in over his head out here.

There were some days -days like today for instance- when it felt like the best and brightest Earth had to offer were as children fumbling in the dark, blindly blundering into things they didn't understand and unleashing a world of death and destruction, as Pandora opening the box.

Rodney and Radek were both exceptionally skilled in their field, and were first among those experienced with Ancient technology. If anyone from Earth could have understood and anticipated what this device would do, it should have been one of them. And yet it seemed to have taken them both totally by surprise, Rodney before he could even begin to study it. Carson, called the best doctor in two galaxies by the Atlantis team, could not find a medical solution to the effects of the device.

In Carson's eyes, Elizabeth saw a reflection of her own feelings. This was a bad day...

* * *

...Rodney had been relocated to Earth, despite protests that he wanted nothing more to do with the war against the Wraith. Nobody seemed to grasp that it had been his fault that the Wraith found Atlantis. It had been he who set off the distress beacon that brought them straight to Atlantis. It had been his arrogance and incompetence that had caused the _Daedalus_ to be destroyed. It was he who had inadvertently disabled the city's shields. He'd failed yet again when the time came to destroy the city, all but delivering Atlantis to the Wraith on a silver platter. And then he had helped them do God knows what, furthering their understanding of and ability to control Ancient technology, operating devices that they themselves could not and who knew what else.

But it was a lot worse than that, hard as that was to believe. It wasn't just that he had failed, that he had made a thorough mess of everything he attempted. It was who had suffered for it. Up until recently, Rodney had lost all touch with his family. Growing up, his life had been anything but pleasant, and he'd become a pretty messed up person at least partially because of it. He'd never been able to connect with people, and had spent the majority of his life isolated, unable to even coexist in a working capacity with anyone because they found his personality so offensive.

Atlantis had been different. For the first time, he'd begun to understand what 'home' meant to most people. A place of belonging. Of being needed. Even being wanted. Those people had been his friends. And he had just lost every single one of them to the Wraith because of his own inability to do his job properly. He'd just lost everything and everyone that ever mattered to him.

Well... almost everyone.

General Landry had tried having a talk with Rodney, but after being blown off in the rudest way Rodney could come up with, he'd decided that he needed backup to help him. To that end, he had Jean Miller -Rodney's sister- contacted.

"Mer, come on, what's wrong with you? Even I'm working for the SGC now. The Wraith are here, and they're killing us," Jeannie was not pulling any punches, "You don't need anyone to tell you how smart you are. We're running out of smart, brave people. We need everyone we've got. It's not just about defeating the Wraith. People are evacuating. People know there's aliens among us now, and they need reassurance, and to be told by someone who knows what's going on. You know the Wraith better than anyone."

"Anyone who's still alive, you mean," Rodney replied dully.

"Mer, I'm sorry about Atlantis. I truly am. But you can't hide from this," Jeannie came and knelt in front of the chair Rodney was sitting in and took his hand, looking up at him, "Meredith... please. I don't want my little girl to die. It's selfish, I know, but that's what it comes down to. You're the one who wants to save the world. I just want to save my daughter, because Maddie _is_ my world. And that world is in danger now, Mer."

"What are you talking about?" Rodney asked, unable to keep himself from responding to the pleading in the eyes of his sister, "Isn't your family being evacuated?"

"No," Jeannie shook her head, "Probably not. They don't have priority, and there are so many who do."

"Then why did you agree to help the SGC if not to protect them?" Rodney wanted to know.

"Because this is the only way I can even try to save them. If I'm not here, that's one fewer mind working on ways to combat the Wraith and their technology."

"Wait..." Rodney couldn't believe he hadn't already asked the obvious, "How are people being evacuated? Haven't the Wraith taken over the Stargate?"

"They did, briefly," Jeannie explained, "But General O'Neill and a team were able to take the base back. We don't know how the Wraith are still coming. That's why we need people like you. We need to figure out how they're still getting here, and -more importantly- how to stop them."

"Jeannie, I..." Rodney broke off, shook his head and tried again, "I _can't_. I'm... I'm done."

"What happened to you?" Jeannie asked, sounding almost... disappointed, " Where's that massive ego you've been carrying around since we were kids?"

"It tends to be a bit of a blow to one's ego when you watch all of your friends die because you weren't smart enough, or capable enough to stop it," Rodney said.

"What did the Wraith do to you?" Jeannie asked, slowly shaking her head, "You can't quit now. People still need you. No matter what you've done in the past, that's done. You've got to help us now."

"Jeannie..." Rodney shook his head miserably.

Jeannie stood up and spoke firmly, "No. This is no time to wallow. Meredith, get up and get to work. The whole Earth is counting on you... especially me. If you won't do it for yourself, or for me, at least do it for the memory of your friends. Make sure they didn't die for nothing."

She stood there, waiting for him, and Rodney found he could not ignore her.

He sighed heavily, "Fine. I'll do it."

"Let's get to work," Jeannie said, smiling and clearly pleased with herself...

* * *

...The bad day had spun itself out, and now had come the long night.

Elizabeth knew it would be a long night because the complaints abated only during dinner and she suspected then only because of the policy she had instituted at the urging of several people that work stop at the entrance to the mess hall with the exception of dire emergencies, or things that were apt to turn into dire emergencies if nobody got them under control.

Zelenka had his department pretty well in hand. He spent much of his work time being openly ridiculed and berated by Rodney, which he tolerated with almost inhuman grace. But Rodney had _chosen_ Zelenka to work with him. If there was anything that required he trust the other person, Rodney _chose_ Zelenka. Everybody knew that Zelenka was not just head of his own department, he was second in Rodney's as well. Even though Rodney was all-but vicious in his verbal dealings with people, they all knew he was absolutely brilliant, and that it took a lot to get him to tolerate working with someone. Zelenka had to be almost or equally as brilliant for Rodney to even consider putting up with him. That reality, coupled with the fact that Zelenka put up with Rodney's constant abuse, automatically earned him respect and even an amount of awe from his subordinates, and he seldom had trouble keeping his department and also Rodney's under control and working smoothly.

On the military side of things, chain of command held. Even with the informal atmosphere of Atlantis, the very relaxed attitude towards rules and regulations that was an inherent byproduct of a civilian run operation, the Marines and members of the Air Force had all maintained their discipline. Sheppard was down, so was Lorne, so control fell to the third in command. Nobody bucked the system. Elizabeth had made it perfectly clear on more than one occasion that she didn't want a bunch of protocols changed around just because Sheppard was out of the picture. Not until an appointment became permanent did she want any major changes introduced. Even then, she wanted there to be a few beats of calm before changes were made after someone knew took control of a department.

The problems arose the moment someone from Zelenka's department made contact with the military side of things. Civilians and soldiers had always clashed, with different training and background and viewpoint. A huge part of Sheppard and Rodney's jobs were either smoothing ruffled feathers or beating down oversized egos until the unreasonable amount of whining subsided. Elizabeth wasn't entirely sure how they did it, but she seldom received complaints when the two were on the job. But with someone else in charge, people started going around the system. Instead of telling their department head, they wanted to come and complain to Elizabeth.

This didn't happen much on the military side of things, but the civilian side was a nightmare. The problem with the military side was that the solution to most issues they encountered was to meet them with aggression. It was easy for the people with the combat training to wind up unintentionally becoming bullies instead of protectors in their pursuit of security and order. In a way, Rodney's abrasive personality was what kept things in check. The soldiers were used to tolerating Rodney, and there was no one more verbally abusive than he was, so anyone less really didn't raise their ire too much.

But at the end of the day, Elizabeth heard from both Zelenka and Lt. Edison. Lt. Edison wasn't actually the third after Sheppard and Lorne, but due to scheduled 'Gate travel, he proved to be the practical choice to take on the job of coordinating security in Atlantis.

"These people are crazy, Doctor Weir," Edison opened.

He and Zelenka had come in, carefully not looking at each other, and waited for Elizabeth to acknowledge them and encourage them to begin speaking.

Zelenka's response to Edison was a string of Czech which Elizabeth was pretty sure translated roughly to 'the hell we are, you're the bastards who won't let us do our job'. Edison knew no Czech, but he recognized an insult when he heard it and glared at Zelenka, who gazed steadily back.

"It's been a long day," Elizabeth reminded them, managing to regain their full attention with her first word, "Perhaps one of you should tell me what this is about."

The truth of Elizabeth's statement became clear when Zelenka opened with Czech and then switched to English when he remembered who he was talking to. It happened less frequently than it used to, but when he was tired or flustered, Zelenka tended to revert to his first language. He also sometimes did it as a means of venting frustration, because most of the people he worked with couldn't understand him.

"We believe we have gained enough information based off of what I remember of the readings I took and was unfortunately forced to abandon to shut down the device relatively safely. Once we have done that, we will be able to study it in greater detail and figured out what it actually does," Zelenka explained.

"And I think going back to that planet is a fool's errand," Edison retorted, "It was one thing to go back for Major Lorne. We don't leave people behind. It's a completely different matter to do what Zelenka wants."

"What I _want_ is irrelevant," Zelenka snapped, evidently having already had his patience thoroughly tested, and lacking the respect for Edison that he had for Rodney or even Sheppard, "What is relevant is what must be done. There are five people in the infirmary who may well be dying. I have been tasked with trying to stop that from happening, and this is the way to do it. I have been over it, and so has my team. Repeatedly. This is what we must do if we are to continue forward. And Dr. Beckett agrees."

Edison was shaking his head, "In the history of bad ideas, this one-"

"Gentlemen, please," Elizabeth interrupted, "This is no time to be fighting amongst ourselves. Dr. Zelenka, how sure are you that this is safe?"

Zelenka hesitated, "I cannot be a hundred percent certain. But I am reasonably convinced that the pulse is predictable, and we can time our mission to avoid it. I am also convinced that I know how to turn it off. But without further study, I cannot make a guarantee on either count."

"You were wrong before," Edison said, "What makes you think you're right now?"

"This is my field of expertise," Zelenka replied, "Given enough time to study the problem, I believe I have found the solution. That is my job, Lieutenant. What is yours again?"

Elizabeth knew Zelenka had been having the same hard day as the rest of them and he was beginning to sound like Rodney as a result of that. Oddly, that actually gave Elizabeth confidence. Openly displayed arrogance was not Zelenka's usual habit. If he was sure enough about this to be vocally offended by Edison's comments, he must have some reason for being so.

It would have been nice to table the issue for the night, and leave it for the morning. But Elizabeth knew better. Carson had already made very clear his discomfort with the continued state of his patients. The more times he had to fight to bring them back, the weaker their bodies got. Each time they slipped, it took a lot out of them. Carson could not continue indefinitely. And neither could they.

Elizabeth knew that Zelenka was painfully aware that his earlier mistake had cost Major Lorne dearly, and it might even cost him his life if they could not find a way to stop what was happening. She trusted that Zelenka had no intention of making the same mistake twice. He was far too smart for that.

"Alright," she said with a nod, "Lt. Edison, select a team to accompany Dr. Zelenka."

"I will need some members of my own team to join me," Zelenka ventured.

"Of course," Elizabeth said, "Whoever you need."

"Thank you, Dr. Weir," Zelenka said sincerely.

Edison looked rather put out, but Colonel Sheppard had made it clear to everyone under his command that -though she was civilian- Elizabeth Weir was his direct superior. He answered to her, even before he answered to high ranking officers within the Air Force. She was his commander. As such, she had command over everyone under him. Sheppard might have been down, but his authority still showed through quite plainly. Elizabeth was sure Edison would have balked if not for the rules Sheppard had laid down for his men by word and example. Instead of protesting, Edison merely waited for dismissal before going to carry out the orders Elizabeth had just given him.

It was not without reason that Elizabeth had insisted that Sheppard remain in charge of the military aspects of the Atlantis expedition. Though very young for his rank, he had the right mixture of military bearing and flexibility to cope with the unusual environment he found himself in. He was willing to follow the rules to the letter, but also to bend them as necessary. He was able to be very strict, insisting on protocols and routines, without becoming impossible for the civilians to approach. He had a casual air about him that made people feel naturally welcome and secure in his presence, but with enough ferocity to maintain order even when dealing with people who had the most unruly dispositions.

Even though Sheppard was down, and so was his official second, his influence was still thoroughly present in the behavior of the men he had worked with for so long and spent so much time training...

* * *

...Rodney hadn't been looking at the data for how the Wraith were traveling so quickly for very long before he recognized what was happening. The problem was, he couldn't see how that knowledge did him any good. At first, he couldn't guess how they'd figured out the technology. Then he realized what had happened. How they knew.

"It was me," Rodney said quietly, "This is all my fault."

"What do you mean?" Jeannie asked, "What did you find out?" she looked over his shoulder at the calculations he'd typed into his computer while he was putting it all together, "Mer, what is that?"

"It's a wormhole drive," Rodney replied weakly, "The Ancients built the Stargates to use stable wormholes to travel from one world to another almost instantly..." he trailed off, unable to finish.

"And the wormhole drive allows a ship to do the same thing," Jeannie concluded, "How is that your fault?"

"The knowledge of how to do that existed only in the Ancient database. I was studying it, trying to figure out how to make it work."

"And you never came to me?" Jeannie asked, sounding put out.

"Jeannie, please... not now," Rodney replied, "The Wraith must have somehow found out about it and... made me tell them how to do it. But the power requirements -to borrow a phrase- are astronomical. There's no way the hive ships could handle that. Unless... unless..." he rolled the chair he was sitting in away from one computer and towards another, pulling up information before he finished, "Unless _I_ helped them learn how to do it. God, I brought them. I brought the Wraith to Earth."

Before that horrible realization could fully settle in and make itself felt, Jeannine interrupted.

"Mer, it doesn't matter now," her voice sounded far away, but fierce and he listened, "What matters is that you can figure out how to stop them. You know how to make it work, so you know how to make it stop."

"It's not that simple," Rodney protested feebly, "I... I don't remember making it work. I was still in the research phase, not even far enough to have a theory as to where the Ancients went wrong. I'm years away from being able to harness that technology."

"But you did harness it," Jeannie persisted.

Rodney began to argue, but her choice of phrase, or perhaps his, had sparked an idea.

"And now all we have to do is figure out how to unharness it," Rodney said.

"How do we do that?" Jeannie asked, and Rodney remembered that she was not as familiar with the Stargate technology itself as many people he worked with simply because it had never really come up.

"We find a way to destabilize the wormhole. Some sort of... energy beam or something... something that would have an effect on the wormhole. With the right sort of interference -often a sun- somewhere along the path of the wormhole, people and things within the wormhole can wind up at the wrong planet, the wrong time or even the wrong universe. We just have to figure out how to... do that."

"You're making the face," Jeannie said.

"What face?" Rodney asked, confused.

"The 'I have a brilliant idea' face," Jeannie replied, "The one that usually results in something going terribly wrong and then you needing my help to fix it."

"What are you talking about? I fix things without your help all the time."

"Not when you've got that face," Jeannie said, "Talk to me, Mer."

Rodney turned from the computer screen he'd been gazing at and looked directly at her, "Jeannie, if I'm wrong about this, you won't have time to fix it, we'll all be dead."

"Mer, we're all going to be dead anyway if you don't try," Jeannie said.

"Okay," Rodney nodded, taking a deep breath, "Okay. Follow me. This won't take long."

They had been occupying one of the labs at the SGC, but now Rodney led the way to the main power room. He didn't have to tell Jeannie what he was doing, he just started doing it and she followed suit.

"This is going to overload the power supply to the Stargate," Jeannie said.

"I know," Rodney replied, "That's the idea. See, if we do it just right, we'll generate a power surge that should cause the wormhole not to connect with whatever Stargate we dial. Instead, it'll jump, and just might connect to a wormhole a Wraith ship is generating. They're too big to come through the Stargate, so they should get stuck and hopefully obliterated."

"Will that work?" Jeannie inquired, still working on plugging and unplugging various cables.

"We're about to find out," Rodney said, stepping back from the panel where he'd been flipping switches, "That should do it."

He didn't wait for her to reply, and instead took off for the 'Gate control room at a dead run.

"I need to be occupying this space," he said to the sergeant at the computer.

When the man didn't move immediately, Rodney gave his chair -which had wheels- a hearty shove and the sergeant rolled away, looking a little bit stunned and confused. It was about then that alarms started ringing, informing everyone that a power overload was imminent. Rodney was busy dialing the Stargate and was therefore deaf to it.

"What's the meaning of this?" General Hank Landry came out of his office.

"Goodbye, General," Rodney replied, turning to face Landry as he completed the dialing sequence.

The room began to vibrate and shudder, much as it had done during the early days, before they figured out how to stabilize the dialing process. Only this time the shaking kept getting worse. And the power surge hit right on schedule. Monitors exploded, sparks ignited within computers. The Stargate's wormhole opened. A low hum filled the air. It got louder, louder, stronger until there was nothing in the world but that ungodly sound. And still Rodney stood, his back to the Stargate, gazing at the General.

But not for long, because a blinding light shot from the Stargate, brighter than sunlight. It expanded, and swallowed the world. Rodney didn't live to hear the explosion that followed...

* * *

...Rodney woke up.


	8. Chapter 8

Nobody had expected Rodney to wake up, much less wake up sounding perfectly lucid. Actually 'perfectly' would be an overstatement. When he had obtained consciousness, Rodney had immediately snapped to a sitting position (or as close as his restraints would allow) and screamed, startling the medical personnel who had only moments before been struggling to keep his heart from stopping. After about five seconds, he seemed to come around, specifically focusing on Carson.

"Carson," he said, sounding surprised and breathless, "You're alive."

"Aye, last time I checked," Carson replied, recovering quickly from his shock and using a soft voice to sooth his obviously rather hysterical patient, "And so are you."

"So am I," Rodney said quietly, "Huh."

He then collapsed back onto the bed, unconscious.

But it was a different kind of unconsciousness from before, and he revived several minutes later, to find that Carson had contacted Elizabeth and she'd come down to see for herself. Rodney pushed himself up on his elbows and looked at her with eyes unfocused from too many drugs (and hopefully not brain damage).

"You're also alive," Rodney observed.

"Yes..." Elizabeth answered slowly.

"Is everyone alive?" Rodney asked.

"That depends," Elizabeth said, "What do you mean by 'everyone'?"

"You know," Rodney told her, "Sheppard, Ronon, Teyla. The members of the Atlantis expedition. The _Daedalus_ ' crew. The people back on Earth... Jeannie."

Elizabeth glanced at Carson, who merely shrugged. She turned back to Rodney.

"Yes," Elizabeth said reassuringly, "They're all alive."

"And... uh... Zelenka, too? He's alive, right?"

"Yes, Radek is fine, Rodney," Carson told him gently, "What makes ye think otherwise?"

"Oh thank God it worked," Rodney sighed, laying back against his pillow, "Something I did _finally_ worked."

Carson looked at Elizabeth, and it was her turn to shrug. To them, this sounded very strange. Rodney seldom admitted that anything he did hadn't worked. It was Rodney's standard operating procedure to call failure a setback and blame any disasters on Zelenka. Certainly it was not his habit to admit that many of the things he tried did not work. Carson and Elizabeth were both wondering the same thing: was Rodney really all there, or was he like Sheppard and Ronon had been when they woke up earlier?

"What day is it?" Rodney inquired when he recovered from his moment of what looked to be euphoric relief.

Carson answered him, and Rodney looked startled.

"You mean it's been less than twenty-four hours since we encountered the device?"

"Aye," Carson said, "How much time did ye think had passed?"

"Months, at least," Rodney replied absently, "I'm not actually sure."

He appeared to be thinking, and didn't respond at first when Elizabeth asked him what he remembered.

"Rodney?" Carson touched Rodney's shoulder, and he snapped out of thought.

"Hmm? Yes? What?" Rodney asked, looking from Carson to Elizabeth.

"Rodney, what do you remember?" Elizabeth repeated.

"Remember about what?" Rodney asked, then seemed to forge a connection in his mind, "Oh. Oh. Yes, I remember everything."

"Define 'everything'," Elizabeth suggested.

"Well, we went to the planet, traced the energy source, and got hit with a pulse," Rodney said, "Even though I wasn't aware of it at the time, I have to assume that pulse knocked the entire team unconscious. Everything I remember after that was a dream."

"And what do ye remember?" Carson wanted to know.

"Well, I remember being captured, tortured, killed by a Wraith, brought back to Atlantis, activating a distress signal with the device that attracted the Wraith to Atlantis, the _Daedalus_ being destroyed, Atlantis being overrun, being killed by the Wraith-"

"Again?" Elizabeth interrupted.

"Yes," Rodney answered, then continued, "Waking up at the Alpha Site, being brought back to Earth, figuring out how to stop the Wraith from coming to Earth, realizing we were doomed anyway, and blowing up the planet with the Stargate. Then I woke up here."

He said all of this as though it made absolute sense, and used the sort of tone one might when discussing a team they didn't care about for a sport that they were not particularly interested in.

"Rodney... none of that happened," Elizabeth said.

"Yes," Rodney responded, "I know. That's why I blew up the Earth."

"Ye're gonna have to explain that a wee bit more," Carson told him.

"I figured out none of what I was experiencing was real," Rodney said, then frowned, "Frankly I'm surprised it took me so long, but it was like I couldn't think in there."

"You figured out it wasn't real, and so you blew yourself up," Elizabeth clarified.

"Oh yes," Rodney nodded, "See, I figured it was the only way out."

"How did ye figure that?" Carson asked, "Ye'd already died twice before, why should a third time be any different?"

"There was nothing left to destroy, which meant it had to be the last backup scenario," Rodney replied, as though that made any kind of sense at all, "I'd run out of people to get killed," he abruptly went pale, "Wait, there was the Alpha Site. I forgot about that. Oh God, I could have just stayed in there..."

"Rodney," Elizabeth said sharply, regaining Rodney's wandering attention, "What are you talking about?"

"The device," Rodney said, "I know what it does. I mean, I think I do. Maybe not," he looked suddenly uncertain, and then panicky, "In fact, I may be completely off-base," he frowned, "I forgot about the Alpha Site. Maybe I'm wrong about this too. Maybe I just-"

"Rodney!" Elizabeth broke into his thought process.

"Hmm? Yes?" Rodney looked up at her.

"What does the device do?" Elizabeth asked, speaking very slowly and clearly.

"Oh. Well, it knocks you unconscious with an electronic pulse," Rodney said.

"We know _that_ , Rodney," Carson told him.

"Ah, but do you know what happens next?"

"Victims wake up with violent inclinations, and their hearts occasionally cease to function," Carson replied in what for him qualified as an irritable tone.

"What? That doesn't make any sense," Rodney was staring into nothing again, thinking, "Wait, yes it does."

"Care to enlighten the rest of us?" Carson asked.

"What? Oh. Well... no. I mean, I don't think... I... uh... I'm not really..." he attempted to wave a hand near his head, but his wrist was still bound, so he gave it up with a sigh, "I don't know what I'm doing."

That was an admission that Rodney had probably never made in his entire life. It didn't matter what his mental or physical condition was, Rodney was always determined that he was fine and clear headed. A heavy overdose of the Wraith enzyme had rendered him all but incoherent, but he'd been unaware of it, though surprisingly cooperative considering the violent behavior that it usually elicited.

Rodney looked away, seemingly embarrassed. Elizabeth and Carson exchanged yet another look, and this time both of them shrugged.

"It's possible that whatever it does to them mentally hasn't worn off yet," Carson told Elizabeth quietly, "Obviously there's a psychological component to this that we dinna understand."

"Will the others wake up like Rodney?" Elizabeth asked.

"I canna say for sure," Carson admitted.

"Probably not," Rodney ventured, not looking at either of them, "Sheppard, maybe. Ronon and Teyla... especially Teyla... I doubt it."

"What makes ye say that, Rodney?" Carson asked of him.

"I just..." Rodney looked at Carson briefly, hesitated, then looked away again before saying, "I... just think... that's how it works. I could be wrong. In fact... well... I'm probably wrong."

"You?" Carson said, raising his eyebrows in obvious shock, " _You_ think ye're wrong?"

"Probably," Rodney replied, not looking up from the spot on the wall he seemed to be staring at.

"Perhaps we should get Dr. Zelenka in here," Elizabeth suggested, "Rodney?"

Rodney twitched slightly, but didn't look at her.

"I think what he needs is to rest, Dr. Weir," Carson said.

"I'm aware of that," Elizabeth said, "But it's obvious that he knows more than he's telling us. Maybe Dr. Zelenka can understand him better than we do, since Ancient technology is their shared field of expertise."

"Aye," Carson agreed with clear reluctance, "But keep it brief, please."

He cast a concerned look at his friend, who did not return the look...

* * *

...Atlantis had fallen silent. Lorne could only assume that it was because Dr. McKay was literally unspeakably annoyed with him. Lorne figured that was some kind of accomplishment, since he couldn't remember anything or anyone being able to bring a McKay tirade to a sudden halt.

Lorne would have thought that McKay finally shutting up would come as a relief, but the silence was ominous and made him feel uneasy. In the dark, cold and rain, the only tie he had to Atlantis was that MALP with McKay's voice piping through it. It was his guide as well. Without McKay jabbering at him, the internal workings of the device looked more menacing and incomprehensible than before.

While he was no tech wizard, Lorne had never been too inept technologically speaking. He was able to cope even with the advanced alien technology enough to do patch jobs if nobody else was available. But this... for some reason he couldn't get it to make sense, even with McKay impatiently explaining all of it in layman's terms.

So far, it seemed like all Lorne had managed to do was actually make things worse by accidentally cracking one of the crystals and somehow losing track of another.

As Lorne was staring somewhat helplessly at the innards of the device, he heard a noise behind him. Pivoting, he drew his pistol and recognized McKay a fraction of a second later.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Lorne hissed, "I thought you said another pulse would kill you."

"It probably will," McKay responded, "But you weren't getting how to fix this fast enough."

"What do you mean?" Lorne asked.

"Elizabeth's dead," McKay replied, "And now Carson's down too. He has the ATA gene, so maybe he'll survive. Maybe not. In either case, it's time we did something about it."

Lorne nodded wordlessly...

* * *

...Rodney was no more communicative to Zelenka than he had been with Carson and Elizabeth. In fact, if anything, he seemed even more reticent. He even refused to repeat what he'd said earlier, making Elizabeth and Carson recount it as best they could for Zelenka, who seemed just as puzzled by Rodney's phrasing as they were. About the only thing Rodney was clear about was how he felt about Zelenka's being alive.

"I'm glad you're alive," Rodney said, "I prefer you alive."

"I prefer to be alive," was Zelenka's mild response.

Rodney nodded, seemingly pleased by this answer.

"But, Rodney, if you know something, you need to tell me," Zelenka continued.

Rodney shook his head slowly, "No... no I don't think I... I shouldn't."

"You told Dr. Weir and Dr. Beckett that you don't believe the others will wake up like you did," Zelenka said, "Is that because you believe they will wake up in a different mental state? Or because you do not believe they will wake up at all?"

"I don't know," Rodney insisted, shaking his head more vehemently, "I don't know."

"But you've got a theory. You would not have said it if you didn't," Zelenka persisted.

"No," Rodney continued to shake his head, "No... I can't. It'll just make things worse."

"How?" Zelenka wanted to know, "How could your telling me what you know possibly make things worse? Things have already been made worse by my lack of knowledge."

"What?" Rodney snapped to attention at that, looking Zelenka in the eyes for the first time, "What are you talking about?"

"We returned to the planet," Zelenka explained, "I believed I understood how the device worked, and that I could safely turn it off. Major Lorne paid the price for my arrogance."

"Lorne? Is he dead?" Rodney asked, then answered himself before Zelenka could respond, "No, he shouldn't be dead. That wouldn't make sense."

"He's alive, Rodney," Elizabeth said when Zelenka became distracted trying to guess what line of reasoning Rodney had just used, "But unconscious, like the rest of your team."

"Yes, okay, that makes sense," Rodney nodded emphatically, then looked at Carson, "Can whatever's in this IV in my arm stop being put inside me? It's making it hard to focus," he had a half-panicked look as he quickly added, "If that seems like a good idea to you. Because if it's not, you should leave it."

"I think it should stay fer the moment, Rodney," Carson replied.

"Okay. Okay, then leave it there," Rodney said, then turned back to Zelenka and appeared to really see him for the first time, "Why are you in gear? Where are you going?"

"Back to the planet," Zelenka replied, "We were about to go and try again to disarm the device when you woke up. As soon as I leave here, I'm going through the Stargate."

"No, no, no, no," Rodney said quickly, shaking his head fiercely, and running his words together as he continued, "No, bad idea, that's a bad idea, you shouldn't do that."

"Why not?" Zelenka asked patiently, "What makes it such a bad idea?"

"It just _is_ ," Rodney said positively, "It's a bad idea and I know I said that I don't know what I'm doing, but I know about this and you shouldn't go because... because I said so," fear flickered in his eyes briefly, but he did not amend his statement.

"Alright, then tell me what it is that we should be doing," Zelenka said, "Because it sounds to me like you are suggesting we do nothing. Are you saying the others will simply wake up in time?"

"No, no that's not what I'm saying!" Rodney exclaimed, "What I'm saying is going back to the planet is a bad idea because... well... because... that's... that's how you die. Except that didn't really happen. But it could. It could happen. And that... well, that would be bad."

"How did Dr. Zelenka die, Rodney?" Elizabeth asked.

"He.. uh... well... he was shot, by angry natives."

"What natives?" Zelenka inquired.

"Oh. Well... they probably don't actually exist. But the device does, and what it can do is... well, I think it would probably kill you. And anyone else without the ATA gene. And maybe even with it."

"Really?" Zelenka raised his eyebrows and glanced up at Elizabeth, looking pleased with himself.

Rodney didn't even seem to be aware that he was offering up informational tidbits he'd been withholding before. He was clearly so concerned about Zelenka going to the planet that he was willing to say anything to stop him. It was unclear why he was refusing to simply share his theory without coercion, but Carson's notion about the psychological effect of the device seemed a strong bet.

Certainly Rodney did not appear to be firing on all cylinders.

"So if we do nothing, half your team will die," Zelenka said.

"Probably, yes," Rodney admitted with obvious reluctance.

"And you are okay with this?" Zelenka asked.

"NO!" Rodney yelped, "No, I'm not okay with it! But I'm not okay with you dying either!"

"Then help us find an alternative!" Zelenka finally exploded, "You obviously have ideas, why won't you share them? You have never been like this, and I do not know how to help you."

During Zelenka's tirade, Rodney's gaze fell, until he was staring at the blanket covering him, looking quite ashamed of himself and saying nothing in his defense.

"Radek," Carson placed a hand on Zelenka's shoulder, "Perhaps ye should let him be."

"No," Rodney said very quietly and without looking up, "No. Radek is right."

Rodney took a deep, if shaky, breath. It seemed to take tremendous effort for him to finally meet Zelenka's eyes. It was quite some time before he found the wherewithal to speak.

"I know..." Rodney faltered, and tried again, "I know what happened..." he shook his head slightly, "I know it wasn't real. But it _felt_ real. And... I'm having a hard time... dealing with that. But I think I know why. I think... I can figure this out. But I... I need your help."

"Whatever I can do," Zelenka said, "As always."

Rodney nodded silently, then gradually made himself look at Carson.

"Carson... I need you to let me out of here," He spoke shakily, and it was hard for him, "There's a lot we have to do, and I'm afraid there's not much time to do it."

It was clear to all of them that Rodney was terribly afraid of something, and it seemed centered around helping to turn off the device, or at least its effects. When Carson hesitated, obviously concerned about his patient's health, Rodney got more persistent.

"Carson, please," Rodney begged, looking Carson in the eyes steadily as he spoke, "This is hard enough for me already. And it's important. Important that I do this. It's my... it's... Teyla... Ronon... Sheppard. _Please_ , let me do this."

Carson sighed with unhappy resignation, "Aye."

Rodney looked both relieved and extremely stressed by Carson's response.

"Okay," Rodney said, "Radek, I assume you have taken some sort of readings or made notes or something that we can work with."

"Of course," Zelenka responded.

As if he had expected this all along, Zelenka held out a tablet he'd been carrying. Rodney took it and looked over the data displayed on its screen while Carson stopped the flow through the IV. Rodney didn't appear to notice. In fact, the second he started looking over what Zelenka had, he seemed to forget other people even existed.

Elizabeth had seen that look before. It was a trance-like state common to all geeks, nerds and tech people, as well as many -if not all- varieties of scientists. Rodney was one of the few of his kind who did not forget the nature of time while he was at it. Though he was unlikely to move unless disturbed, the thing was that he _could_ be disturbed. It _was_ possible to get his attention if needed.

But for now, Elizabeth didn't need to do that. She decided it was best to let Rodney do his job in peace, without her hovering over him worriedly.

"Let me know if you find anything," Elizabeth said.

Zelenka issued a noncommittal grunt, Rodney didn't react at all.

Elizabeth knew it was going to be a long night. Waiting was always hard enough, especially when you could almost hear the ticking of a countdown clock in your head. But it was all the worse when you'd already committed to take action, but then had to stop for some reason, especially if that reason was to bring someone up to speed on what you already knew.

It was a delay Elizabeth knew most people would not understand, and might even resent. She fully expected a visit from Edison, demanding to know why the mission was being delayed and possibly even scrubbed. But Elizabeth was confident. Zelenka was among the most skilled in his field, and certainly he was easier to get along with than many people. But Elizabeth had chosen Rodney to be in charge of that department for a reason and over the last few years she had seen him do the impossible over and over, each time raising the bar on what exactly that word meant.

He had done it before, and she believed he could do it now. He could sound shaky and uncertain all he liked, but he was still Rodney McKay. When it came to a scientific solution, there was no one more qualified to save the day, Elizabeth was sure. She was betting the lives of four of her people on it.


	9. Chapter 9

"No, see, here's where you went wrong," Rodney said.

"We don't need to know where I went wrong," Zelenka reminded him somewhat impatiently, "We need to know how to make the device stop functioning."

"Actually," Rodney corrected him, "We need to find how to stop its effects. Turning it off may only be a byproduct of that. After we do that, then we'll want to study the device more closely. If it does what I think it does, it won't do us any good, but we may as well look at it," he said all of this confidently, but then suddenly felt a twinge of uncertainty, "That's right, isn't it? You agree with that?"

He gave Zelenka an uncertain sidelong glance.

Zelenka sighed heavily, pushing his glasses down so he could pinch the bridge of his nose. Before he answered, he put his glasses back and ran a hand through his ever unruly hair.

"Are you going to be like this until we're finished?" Zelenka asked.

"Like what?"

"Look, I can handle your arrogance," Zelenka said, then hurried on before Rodney could finish bristling at that remark, "And I can handle your self-doubt. But this waffling back and forth between the two-" he completed the sentence in Czech while Rodney stared at him without comprehension.

Rodney's response was slow and somewhat hesitant, "Probably, yes. It's a... uh... a side effect. I'm still me, and I know none of that stuff was real... but I still... feel it. It's... it's hard to explain."

"Perhaps it would be easier if you _tried_ ," Zelenka suggested, "Because so far you have done nothing except for evade my questions and tell me where I went wrong, and that is getting us nowhere."

Rodney felt a little annoyed by Zelenka's lack of sympathy, but he looked away and took a breath, swallowing that feeling. He hadn't come to rely on Zelenka as his right hand in saving the galaxy with science for the man's sympathetic nature, but for his brilliant and surprisingly quick (compared to most people) mind. Zelenka was right, Rodney's self-pity was definitely getting in the way.

He supposed it was an aftereffect of the device causing him to react this way, where normally he would just have been angry... mainly because Zelenka was right and Rodney didn't want to admit it.

"Talk to me, Rodney," Zelenka insisted, "You believe you know what this device is for, so tell me. You have been wrong before, and no one knows that better than I do, so there is little harm in telling me what you believe."

Normally Rodney would have taken that as an insult, but today he just felt reassured. It was true. Zelenka had seen Rodney fail up close and personal, and he was smart enough to figure out where and how Rodney had gone wrong. Rodney reluctantly admitted to himself that sometimes Zelenka had even voiced objections because he thought Rodney was wrong; objections that had later proven valid.

"It's a weapon," Rodney said, "At least in a manner of speaking. It's designed to control the Wraith."

"Control? Not destroy?" Zelenka clarified, sounding surprised.

"I don't think so," Rodney replied, "But obviously it's not functioning as intended. In fact, I don't think it's even possible for it to perform its designed function. At least not the way it was intended to."

"Obviously it is not functioning correctly," Zelenka said, "It killed the people who built it."

Rodney made a face and then said, "Eh... sort of."

"Sort of?" Zelenka inquired, "What do you mean 'sort of'?"

"The device itself didn't kill them. Anyway, not all of them," Rodney explained, "Not directly."

"Rodney, please," Zelenka begged, "We do not have time for dramatics. _Tell me_."

"They killed themselves," Rodney said flatly, "Because there is a side effect to the device that they were either too stupid or too arrogant to recognize."

"But you believe you know what that is," Zelenka observed.

"Yes, because I've felt it," Rodney replied, "In fact, I'm living with it right now. And it's bad enough when the device didn't get to finish the job it started."

"Felt what?" Zelenka asked.

"Helpless," Rodney answered him finally, "Completely... helpless."

"I do not understand," Zelenka admitted.

"Fortunately," Rodney said, "You don't have to. Right now, it would take me too long to try and explain it all the way. What you need to know is that the device was built to target Wraith, but whatever software they used to get it to do that wasn't sophisticated enough, or has some incorrect code in it or something... something that made it go after any sentient life form it could detect. Including the Ancients themselves. But it was meant for the Wraith, and that's why Teyla is in more trouble than the rest of us, because she has Wraith DNA..." he broke off suddenly.

"What?" Zelenka asked, recognized the look as the sign of a light bulb turning on in Rodney's head, "What is it? What have you figured out?"

"I think... I think I just figured out how to reverse it," Rodney said, "And not just to stop it from killing them, but to undo the damage it's doing to them. It won't work on me because I'm already out, but..." Rodney broke off, saving his breath for getting out of bed, "Radek, help me."

Zelenka looked around warily, but no medical staff came to stop Rodney. Carson had grudgingly released Rodney from the infirmary. But until now Rodney hadn't had a good reason to get up, and so he hadn't. Now that he did, he became aware of the physical weakness he was suffering from his thrice-near-death experience. Zelenka reluctantly helped him out of bed, and held onto him until he was able to shakily get his balance.

"We need to go talk to Elizabeth," Rodney said, then looked down at himself and realized he was dressed in the usual hospital patient attire, "But first we need to find my pants..."

* * *

… "Okay, that's it!" McKay's voice was slightly muffled because about half of him was currently inside the device, pulling and placing things on the inside that Lorne hadn't even noticed when he'd been in there, "All we've got to do is flip the switch."

McKay backed out of the device, grunting a bit with the effort. He put back the various pieces he'd pulled out to make room for himself in there, and Lorne could sense the time it was taking.

"What switch?" Lorne asked.

"That button up top," McKay replied, picking up the outside panel and securing it, "Hit it."

McKay stepped back as Lorne hit the top button. Nothing happened.

"Shit," McKay said, but that was as far as he got, because a pulse went off, and they both fell...

* * *

… "I thought you said we shouldn't go back to the planet," Elizabeth said, "That it was too risky."

"That was before I realized that we _have_ to go back," Rodney told her excitedly, "We have to go back, and bring Sheppard and the others with us."

"What good will that do?" Elizabeth wanted to know.

"None as things stand now," Zelenka began, but Rodney took over, seeming more like himself by the moment.

"But.. but if we reprogram the device, we can get it to undo what it did," Rodney said.

"Can you do that?" Elizabeth wanted to know, "I thought you didn't know enough about it."

"Zelenka doesn't," Rodney replied, "But I was hit by that pulse. I know how it works. _I_ can fix it," He paused, looking thoughtful, "Well, not fix it as such, because it still won't perform the designed function, but-"

"Dr. McKay believes that he can reverse the damage the device has done," Zelenka concluded.

"Yes," Rodney agreed, "That."

"How confident are you that you can succeed?" Elizabeth asked.

"Oh, I'm not confident at all," Rodney replied matter-of-factly, "But I really... _can't_ be confident right now, so that's not relevant. The point is... what other options do we have? You were already going to send a team back, why not send me?"

"You're not exactly in top form right now," Elizabeth pointed out.

"No, no I'm not. But I know what I'm doing," Rodney said, then looked uneasy, "At least... I think I do. Last time I thought that, I blew up the Earth... but that didn't actually happen so I don't think it counts."

"That's not very reassuring," Elizabeth said dryly.

"Sorry," Rodney said almost meekly, "Would it help if I asked you to trust me on this?"

"Not really," Elizabeth replied, then she sighed, "But I'm going to let you go anyway."

"Oh good," Rodney said, "Because I was about to give up on it."

"That's not reassuring either, Rodney," Elizabeth pointed out.

"I know. I know. I'm sorry," Rodney replied, "But I'm trying, okay? I'm really trying."

Zelenka said something in Czech that sounded a lot to Elizabeth like 'you certainly are'. She suspected there was a double meaning to that statement, but Zelenka didn't repeat it in English so she wasn't sure. Her Czech was somewhat spotty at the best of times.

* * *

It was eventually decided by Elizabeth that Rodney and Zelenka would go on ahead with a team to guard them, and then a second and third team (which would include Carson and a couple of the medical staff members) would bring through Sheppard and the others once the device was ready. It certainly sounded like the safer strategy, but Rodney didn't much care for it. He knew that time was working against them, and felt sure that seconds counted. But Elizabeth insisted, and Rodney understood. If things went pear-shaped, the fewer people caught in the crossfire, the better.

Understanding it didn't mean he had to like it though.

"Let's just hope I don't wind up having to carry you back through the 'Gate again," Dorsey remarked to Rodney while the planet was being dialed.

"It's my understanding that Major Lorne and his team did most of the carrying," Rodney replied, "And, besides, if we get hit with a pulse, you won't be awake to carry anybody."

"I still don't see why we can't use a puddle jumper," said one of Dorsey's men, whose name Rodney had either never known or else forgotten, "The shielding would probably protect us from the pulse."

"Yes, it probably would," Rodney agreed haughtily, "But we'd have to park the jumper right there in the clearing with the Stargate and walk the rest of the way on foot because the surrounding area is completely forested. Believe me..." he paused, eying the patch on the man's uniform, "Lieutenant... I am a huge coward, and I like living safely very much; the key word there being 'living'. If there was a safer way to do this, I would have thought of it."

Zelenka said something that Rodney suspected would translate 'you do not always think of everything' or something to that effect, but nobody paid any attention to him. Rodney had long ago decided to tolerate any insults that he couldn't understand, which was part of his motivation in not learning Czech. If he learned Zelenka's language, he'd know what the man was saying to him in that clearly derogatory tone, and then he might not be able to tolerate working with Zelenka anymore. Not knowing what was being said to him made him a more tolerant man. Maybe that made him a bad person, but that was just who he was. He just couldn't seem to help himself most of the time.

The 'Gate activated and Dorsey's team led the way through. Rodney and Zelenka followed.

It was night on the planet, and that meant it was dark. Night vision was implemented, though Rodney and Zelenka would have to use flash lights to see properly once they reached the device. Rodney found night vision irritatingly limited for a number of reasons, not the least of which was its turning everything various shades of green. The technology was on his list of things to study and improve, but so far he'd been unable to find the time between saving the galaxy, researching Ancient technology and looking for ways to defeat the Wraith and Replicators.

A lot of people seemed to think that geniuses needed to be given ideas on things to study and find ways to improve or invent, but the reality was that Rodney usually had _too many_ ideas, all of them complex and many of them interconnected. He had theories, ideas and concepts too numerous to count, and that was not including the almost continual discovery of new technologies and research laboratories throughout Atlantis, each of which opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Rodney had more ideas than even he -with an entire team of experts- could ever hope to have time for, and those were aside from his regular galaxy saving duties as part of the Atlantis expedition.

Following Dorsey and his team to the ruins, Rodney reflected with some slight amusement that he had actually been somewhat annoyed by the Stargate Program when he had first learned about it. His issue with it was that he'd been forced to lay aside several projects he'd been working on both on his own time and under orders to study the Stargate itself. He at first had not really understood the importance of the Stargate, and it hadn't interested him a great deal, but its extreme complexity had led to the study of it taking almost every waking moment, until one day he was informed that he was one of the foremost experts on the subject of the Stargate, which proved to be a massive inconvenience that eventually got him shipped to Russia.

The experience had taught him _some_ humility, and his admiration for Samantha Carter had grown considerably. He had also learned to respect the Stargate, and the power it had. Moreover, he had become fascinated by it, and by the possibilities it presented, because the experience that led him to be shipped to Russia had shown him that the Stargate was capable of things he had previously not believed possible. In the end, his interest and expertise had expanded to include any and all Ancient technologies, and that was how he had ended up in Antarctica, and on the Atlantis expedition.

The Stargate and the various consequences of its existence still took up almost every waking moment, but Rodney no longer resented it. After all he'd seen and experienced, how could he?

Rodney was purposely preoccupying himself, distracting himself from the intense fear that was boiling inside him. In a very broad sense, he was afraid of the device. But, more precisely, he was afraid of screwing up. This was a fear he'd certainly experienced before, but an aftereffect of what he had experienced in his mind courtesy of the device was the belief that he was going to screw up and get people killed, that his very presence was enough to make the situation worse. Logically, he knew that wasn't true. But that didn't change how he felt. The closer they got to the ruins, the harder it was to ignore. Despite his best efforts, by the time they reached the ruins, he was shivering, and not from cold.

Dorsey noticed.

"McKay, you alright?"

"No," Rodney replied honestly, annoyed by the tremor in his voice, "But it doesn't matter."

Dorsey looked surprised, but said nothing.

Rodney knew that he was infamous for being whiny, demanding, intolerant and in other ways unreasonable. The military members of the expedition were especially aware of his tendencies because so many of them had been forced to escort and guard him, because -while Rodney was practically helpless in a battle situation- his value when it came to repairing and building defense and offense weapons could not be underestimated. Rodney knew well his value, and what usually came off sounding like cowardice was actually just him thinking about what was best for Atlantis. When he demanded protection, it was mostly because he knew that his skills and knowledge were irreplaceable. Though the fact that he liked being alive and didn't want to be maimed or tortured also factored into it.

In any case, for the moment Rodney had to put himself aside. He couldn't trust his feelings or even his thoughts, because they had been essentially programed by that damned device to betray him. He was scared to death, but it didn't matter. He still had to go down into those ruins and face the source of all this. He still had to deal with the device, because no one else was half as qualified as he was.

Because the device hadn't just tied his insides all up in knots, it had inadvertently told him everything he needed to know to stop it. Well, actually it hadn't given him the information. He'd had it all along. But the manipulation of time sense had in a way given him more time to figure it, to realize what he'd seen. And the firsthand experience had told him all he needed to know about the purpose of the device.

At least, he hoped that was the case. Because otherwise he was about to make things much worse.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Rodney started down the slope to the ruins...

* * *

...The rain had stopped, but it was still dark, and Lorne was soaking wet. He was beginning to ache from the cold, and he moaned as he rolled over. It was at this point that he remembered McKay, primarily because he saw the other man lying motionless near the device.

Not having regained enough consciousness to have proper motor skills, Lorne crawled over to McKay without actually getting up. He sought a pulse at McKay's neck, but was shaking too badly to tell if there was one. He decided it didn't matter, he needed to get up and activate the device, regardless of whether McKay was still alive or not.

He used the device to drag himself to his feet and struggled to remember which button it was that McKay had told him needed to be pushed. He located it, and pressed it.

For a second, it seemed like nothing was happening. And then the device went off. The pulse hit him with such force that Lorne was blown back. He slammed against the ground so hard it felt like his chest was going to explode...

* * *

...A few minutes earlier, Sheppard and Teyla had suffered their second attack. Ronon hadn't been affected this time. Carson felt he was understanding less and less what was happening to them, instead of getting a firmer handle on it. This proved especially true when Lorne suffered two attacks in close proximity, whereas on the others there had been a significant amount of time between one attack and the next. Even though he had been hit at a distance, and fewer times than the others, Lorne's body seemed to be having a harder time fighting back, his temperature had dropped dangerously low, and Carson couldn't understand why.

Carson was a good doctor, and he knew it. He was comfortable with his medical skills and knew he had an excellent bedside manner. These weren't things he took excessive pride in, though it always pleased him to know he was able to help someone get better or -if that was impossible- at least being able to ease their passing. To help those who needed it had been the main ambition in his life, and he'd proven to be extremely talented, quickly surpassing the skills and expectations of all of his teachers.

But here in Atlantis he was routinely faced with medical crises he was unable to fathom, diseases and injuries of a sort he felt ill-equipped to deal with. He was the best at what he did, yet that seemed time and again not to be enough. He found himself wondering if perhaps they would have been better off staying in their own galaxy, or even on their own planet.

It was hard to think otherwise at times like these, when people were dying from some malady Carson didn't understand. Not only couldn't he find a cure, he couldn't even seem to make it any easier. Of course, Rodney had survived, which gave Carson some small hope that the others would too. But he could no more explain why Rodney had woken up relatively fine than he could why Lorne's heart had twice attempted to stop, before seeming to shakily remember how to do its job.

Carson had been called the best medical doctor in two galaxies, yet it was Rodney -who knew only enough of medicine to be a hopeless hypochondriac in addition to the real medical afflictions he had- who seemed to think he had the solution.

Rodney had an annoying and persistent arrogance, but Carson had seen enough to know that it was not without reason. Rodney really was the genius he claimed to be, and he'd saved Atlantis and the city's people more than once when the odds were so stacked against him that it seemed utterly impossible. If Rodney said he could cure Sheppard and the others, Carson had to believe that was true.

And so, when he sat down to rest, feeling the strain of the last several hours beginning to catch up to and overwhelm him, Carson found himself placing his trust in Rodney.

"Hurry, Rodney," he whispered under his breath, "Hurry."


	10. Chapter 10

"Radek... help me."

They had been at the device for quite some time, Rodney didn't know how long. They had the cover panels off, and Rodney was down on the ground looking at the insides of the device while Zelenka monitored the power readings in the hopes of giving advance warning if a pulse went off ahead of schedule. Rodney had been working through his fears, picking out the different crystals and power conduits, beginning to feel a little more confident as he saw the device looked just how he'd pictured.

But when the time came to actually do something, Rodney froze. He reached for one of the crystals, just managed to touch it, but then pulled back, unable to grasp it. He was too afraid of doing something to make things worse. Too afraid he might cause a pulse to go off, or the device to explode or... or something. He just knew he was afraid of messing up, that was all.

"What is it?" Zelenka asked, barely glancing up from where he was monitoring the power output.

"I... uh... can't... uh..." Rodney gestured helplessly at the device, "I need you to... uh..." he sighed in defeat, unable to even get the words out, "Never mind."

Zelenka grunted slightly, and returned his attention to his job.

That had always been the nature of their relationship. Rodney called the shots, Zelenka did his job, each trusted the other to do their part and didn't bother spending time worrying about what the other man might be doing. That was how it was at the end of the day, after all the insults and the disagreements and fighting. When it came right down to the wire, they each had faith enough to let the other work. That had always been a good thing, but now it was that very trust that was scaring Rodney.

"What's the hold up?" Dorsey asked somewhat gruffly, coming to look over Rodney's shoulder.

He'd obviously overheard the exchange. He might not know about science, but he'd seen and heard fear enough in his line of work to know it when it was right in front of him.

"Nothing," Rodney answered, "I forget what I was doing for a second, I'm fine now."

"Dr. McKay, if you're not up for this..." Dorsey began.

Something about seeing that face of doubt, the expression of bafflement that followed looking at the interior of the device, helped to restore some of Rodney's confidence. He knew these pieces, Dorsey did not. Rodney had always answered anyone questioning his abilities with hostility. Now was no different. He found that getting angry actually made him forget to be scared.

"I said I'm fine," Rodney spat, "And unless you know how to reprogram this thing, I suggest you back off and let me do my job."

Dorsey gave him a look, and then -to Rodney's surprise- backed off. Rodney realized almost immediately that Dorsey had acted to stabilize Rodney's shaking confidence, and had been surprised by how little it took to get him back on track. How often had Sheppard used pushing, insults or even berating to get Rodney to fight with him instead of wrestling with the fear that was ever trying to drown him? Rodney had lost count. Much as he hated to admit it, Rodney knew that he'd time and again done his best work because Sheppard had brought pressure and provided distraction. From the outside it looked like they were fighting, but the both of them had known for some time now that they were doing what was necessary to get the job done.

Well... Sheppard wasn't here this time. And if Rodney didn't get the job done, it was possible he never would be again, even if he happened to survive as Rodney had. The device might break Sheppard. And that, Rodney realized, was something he could not bear. He grabbed onto that different fear, latched onto it with every fiber of his being, and used it to push aside the other.

He had to take the risk of making a mistake, of failing. If he did nothing, the Sheppard he knew would be lost forever. The consequence of doing nothing was too great.

Rodney took a breath and reached into the device. It was surprising how easy it was to take hold of the crystal he wanted and pull it out. Once he had, he sat there staring at it for a long moment. Then he put it down carefully, and retrieved another crystal. Finally, he took the third.

There was a slight whir, and then the device powered down. Rodney saw the internal lights go off, but he waited for Zelenka to confirm that it was dead.

"Power readings are down," Zelenka said, then amended that a moment later, "It's off."

Rodney sighed with relief, closing his eyes briefly. He'd known that was what would happen when he took those crystals out, but he'd been sure he knew what he was doing before. That had been a running theme in what he experienced after the pulse hit. He'd been so sure he knew what to do, that there was only one viable option, and it had always proven to be the wrong thing or else he'd screwed it up time and again with the consequences getting ever more dire until there was nothing left.

"That's it?" Dorsey asked.

"You were expecting fireworks?" Rodney asked sarcastically, looking up at Dorsey.

"No," Dorsey replied dryly, gazing at Rodney through narrowed eyes, "It's just that time is of the essence. If you've neutralized that thing, it's time for me to send someone back to the 'Gate so they can bring Sheppard and the others through."

"Oh," Rodney said, "Yes. Do that."

Rodney and Zelenka watched as Dorsey moved away and quietly addressed one of his men. The man took off at a swift jog in the direction of the Stargate. Rodney turned to Zelenka.

"Well, don't just stand there," Rodney said impatiently, "Get down here and help."

Zelenka rolled his eyes, but laid aside the tablet he'd been using the monitor the power output of the device and got down on his knees next to Rodney so he could look at the interior of the device.

"You think you know how to reprogram this?" Zelenka inquired.

"It's an Ancient computer," Rodney replied curtly, "No matter what it's for, it still uses the same components and essential programming of every other Ancient computer we've encountered."

"We can't even figure out how to use half the computer systems in Atlantis," Zelenka reminded him.

"But we _do_ know how to use the other half, and have managed to integrate our technology with theirs. This is an old, old prototype that doesn't work. How hard could it be to figure out?"

Zelenka opened his mouth as if to say that was just about the most stupid thing he'd ever heard, but then he shut it again without saying anything. Perhaps he realized that Rodney knew the statement was ridiculous, but was trying to bolster their confidence, or perhaps only his own.

"Well," Zelenka said after a moment's contemplation, "Perhaps we should get started. There is not much time."

"Right," Rodney confirmed, looking from Zelenka back to the interior of the device, "Right."

Even though he was trying not to show it, Rodney was afraid that what he'd done already would backfire at any moment. Perhaps the next time he made a move, he'd ruin it. It took him a moment to find his center again, and to remember that doing nothing was not an acceptable option.

"Okay," Rodney said, nodding to himself, "I think that there," he pointed to a spot near the center of the device, "is the important part of this thing's 'brain'. If we plug in there, we should be able to bypass any attempt it might make to block us out. Then we can get a direct look at this thing's code, and see what changes we need to make."

"I thought you already knew that," Zelenka remarked.

"I may have... exaggerated a little to get Carson and Elizabeth to let me come," Rodney admitted.

Zelenka, muttering in Czech, got up and went to retrieve the tablet.

"One day your exaggerations are going to get us all killed," Zelenka said, handing the tablet to Rodney, "You realize that, don't you?"

"Maybe," Rodney replied, leaning into the device and plugging in the tablet, "But not today."

"How can you be so sure?" Zelenka wanted to know.

"Because I have to be," Rodney said, sitting back and waiting for the tablet to realize it was plugged into something, "Because lives are depending on my being right. Lives I happen to care about."

Zelenka sighed and sat down on the ground next to Rodney, and the two of them took in the information the tablet began to display on its screen, telling them exactly what the device was doing. Of course, it was never that easy. The device was free in its sharing of information, but neither Rodney nor Zelenka were able to at first understand the code it was displaying.

"This is extremely complicated," Zelenka observed.

"And unnecessary," Rodney said, pointing to a particular line of code, "See that? That doesn't look like it's even connected to anything. It just exists, like it used to have a function but somebody rewrote the pathway without actually deleting the code," he shook his head, "Sloppy. Very sloppy."

"We both know the Ancients were advanced, not perfect," Zelenka said, "And you _did_ say that this is a prototype. One that does not work."

"It does work," Rodney corrected, "Just... not in the way they meant it to."

"That is breaking hairs," Zelenka told him.

"Splitting," Rodney replied.

"What?"

Rodney shook his head, "Never mind."

They settled into their work, and soon found more important things to squabble over. Namely, Zelenka had a different idea about what each section of code was for than Rodney did. Arguing vehemently before implementing a strategy was their usual method of working, and it typically served them well. However, today Rodney found it more taxing than usual, and felt his resolve wavering.

"Alright!" Rodney exclaimed finally, "Fine. We'll do it your way."

"I do not want to do it my way," Zelenka told him.

"Then why are you arguing with me?" Rodney asked.

"Because I want to do it the right way," Zelenka answered, "Having to defend your position and modify it as weaknesses are identified is a necessary part of the process of identifying and implementing the correct idea. It is not perfect, but it is better than having no process at all. You know this. You are the one who taught me the adversarial method we use."

"So you don't really think your way is the right way?" Rodney asked, "You're just opposing me... for the hell of it?"

"That is not the point," Zelenka said, "And you are well aware that it is not so simple as that," abruptly he asked, "What is wrong with you?"

Rodney started to answer, but his pride managed to get in the way and he said, "Nothing. Nothing. I'm fine. Let's keep going. Where were we? Oh yes, I'm right and you're not."

Zelenka looked at him oddly for a long moment, then consented to pick up where they'd left off.

After they'd been at it a few minutes, a nagging thought started bothering Rodney.

"Did I really teach you the adversarial process?" he asked.

"No," Zelenka replied, "I just thought it would make you feel better."

"Well it _did_..." Rodney muttered.

"If it helps any," Zelenka ventured, "I know of no one who uses it more consistently -or with greater efficacy- than you do."

"Thanks... I think..."

* * *

...There was daylight coming through the branches of the trees overhead. Lorne lay on his back, staring up at the sky, vaguely surprised to discover that he was still alive. He ached all over, though he wasn't sure at present whether that was from spending the night cold and wet, or from being repeatedly hurled to the ground by the pulse from the device.

He rolled onto his side, the beginning of trying to get up, and noticed McKay still lying there. Forgetting about getting up, Lorne dragged himself over to where McKay was. He wasn't shaking as badly as the night before and this time when he checked for a pulse he was able to confirm its absence.

Hearing the sound of footsteps, Lorne rolled onto his back and pulled his M9 from its holster, aiming it and himself at the entrance to the device room that led to the trail that led to the Stargate. A moment later, he lowered the weapon, recognizing Colonel Sheppard.

"Major," Sheppard acknowledged him, then queried, "McKay?"

Lorne shook his head, which said more than the words he couldn't find to say. Sheppard's eyes fell momentarily, then he nodded, letting out a weary sigh.

"I figured as much," Sheppard said, reaching out a hand to help Lorne stand, "When we figured out he'd gone, it didn't take a genius to guess where. When the Stargate activated itself and sent a massive pulse through Atlantis, there was no doubt."

"Did it work?" Lorne asked, accepting the help and getting to his feet.

Sheppard didn't answer immediately.

"Was it too late?" Lorne asked.

"For some," Sheppard replied, and Lorne was reminded what McKay had said about Teyla and Ronon, "Anybody without the ATA gene is dead. The pulse also took out the shield and cloak, as well as giving off enough energy to attract any ships within sensor range."

"So you came to get McKay," Lorne realized, "because you need him to fix it."

"Yeah... well," Sheppard was silent for a painful moment before dragging himself through the rest of his sentence, "It looks like we're on our own on this one."

There were many experts on Ancient technology, many mechanical geniuses on Atlantis. But it was no secret that -in the most dire circumstances- Atlantis depended on McKay and Zelenka. And now they were both dead, and there was nothing anybody could do about it.

"I'm sorry, sir," Lorne said, "It's my fault they're dead. I should've... done something. Been faster, smarter... something," he shook his head miserably.

"Major," Sheppard spoke sternly, then waited for Lorne to look at him before he continued, "The time for wallowing and assigning blame is later. The time for fighting for our lives is now. Is that understood?"

Lorne took a breath and straightened up, "Yes sir. I understand."

"Alright," Sheppard said with a curt nod, "Now let's get back to Atlantis and do what we can to save what's left of her."

"Yes sir," Lorne replied...

* * *

...Rodney noticed when Carson arrived with his medical team and their patients, but he made no acknowledgment of them, preoccupied with technical difficulties.

In the time it had taken Carson to get his patients and team ready and out here, Rodney and Zelenka had worked out the changes they needed to make to the code. Unfortunately, the device wasn't accepting the new code for some reason. Rodney was still sitting on the ground, fussing with the interior systems using his tablet, while Zelenka used his own tablet to monitor so that he could tell Rodney if something was working, and hopefully warn him if it was about to backfire.

When they had first run into the problem and decided how they would try to deal with it, Rodney had felt his fear resurfacing. This one setback had shaken him to the core, and he'd wondered if it was perhaps something he'd done wrong. He remembered too well what he'd experienced because of the device, and its not being real didn't seem to matter.

"I'd rather you do the corrections," Rodney had said.

"I wouldn't," Zelenka had replied mildly.

That had been that.

Rodney felt a shudder run through him with each action, and he cringed and waited for Zelenka to tell him that he'd just doomed them all. But that statement never came, only the continual remark that nothing had changed, and that Rodney would have to try something else. That in itself was quite bad enough, because it reminded him that he was running out of time.

Evidently Rodney looked almost as rattled as he felt, because Carson noticed and came to kneel beside him, asking, "Are you alright, Rodney?"

"I'm fine," Rodney replied, not daring to look up, lest Carson see the fear in his eyes.

"Ye're sure?" Carson touched Rodney's shoulder gently, "Ye're sweating."

"Get off me," Rodney snapped, shrugging Carson off, then he offered his friend an apologetic look, "Look, Carson... I'm a little busy right now. You can worry about me when this is over, okay?"

"Alright," Carson nodded his understanding, "I'll leave ye to yer work."

"You do that," Rodney said, turning back to the device.

The break in his concentration slowed him down, but it also broke the strangle hold of fear that had been holding him back. As before, his own irritation had blocked out the fear for a moment. He looked over his shoulder to see Carson retreating and kneeling down next to Sheppard, and used that to remind himself that doing nothing was not an option. Gritting his teeth, Rodney went back to work.

"How about now?" Rodney asked of Zelenka after making an adjustment.

"Nothing."

Rodney scowled at his work, and prodded another crystal, "Now?"

"Ne," Zelenka replied, shaking his head.

Completely into his work now, Rodney didn't even noticed that Zelenka had slipped into his native Czech when responding, a sure sign that Zelenka was feeling the pressure too.

Rodney made another change, and Zelenka let out an excited string of chatter that sounded distinctly like something bad. Rodney undid the change, and Zelenka fell silent. From the outside, it probably looked like Rodney had actually understood Zelenka's words, but it was actually a matter of knowing how the man sounded when he was pleased versus when he was upset. Once deep enough into a project, Zelenka and Rodney tended to communicate almost more in sound effects than anything.

Rodney's next inquiry wasn't even a word, let alone a sentence. He just grunted in a questioning manner, and Zelenka responded in the negative. Rodney sighed, and tried again...

* * *

...If Lorne had harbored any hope that perhaps the Wraith hadn't noticed the pulse, it was dashed the moment he and the others returned to Atlantis. The city shuddered from the impact of weapon's fire.

"Major!" Sheppard shouted above the racket, "Get to the jumper bay! Do whatever you have to, just distract those Wraith! Buy us as much time as you can!"

Lorne didn't ask Sheppard what he would be doing. Instead, he responded in the affirmative and ran as best he could to the jumper bay, nearly colliding with other pilots trying to reach puddle jumpers. He actually did slam right into Dr. Beckett, who slipped and nearly fell before Lorne caught him.

"What the hell are you doin' here, Doc?" Lorne asked.

"There's more jumpers than pilots," Beckett answered, "An' I canna be any help with city repairs."

"What about wounded?" Lorne wanted to know.

"There are plenty o' good medical personnel who've never had a flying lesson, son," Beckett assured him, "This is the best way I can help to keep people alive."

"Alright," Lorne said with a nod, "But stay on my wing, okay? Don't go off by yourself."

"D'ye take me fer a fool?" Beckett replied, making his way to an unoccupied jumper.

Lorne shook his head, and made his way to the nearest available jumper.

There were many things Lorne was not well equipped for. It had become sorely apparent to him that he didn't belong on the ground. It seemed like every mission, he was either getting kidnapped or allowing someone else to be captured, or else he or someone he was escorting was being shot or hurt somehow. But there was a good reason for that. Major Lorne was first and foremost a pilot, it was his job to fly, it was what he was best at. It didn't matter that these were alien aircraft, he was just as at ease piloting them as the birds back home. This was what he knew.

Lorne did an improvised roll call to find out who he had with him. If he'd been here the whole time, he would have known, but he'd only just returned to Atlantis. Being out of touch meant he could not be sure who might be alive or dead, down or missing. About half his 'pilots' were like Dr. Beckett, pilots solely because they had the ATA gene and had thus been given a handful of flying lessons.

On the way up to the Wraith ships, Lorne gave them their instructions. He wanted the amateurs to hang back, taking on only the darts that got past the rest or that came right for them. He would lead the others on a concentrated hit and run operation, designed to do as much damage as possible and then cut out before they could be obliterated. They were outnumbered and heavily outgunned.

As they neared their target, Lorne reported in to Sheppard, "We're in visual range, sir."

" _Wish I was up there with you,"_ Sheppard replied.

"You've got a city to direct the operations of, sir," Lorne replied, "Besides, if they can get that chair going, you're the one most qualified to run it."

" _Yeah, don't I know it,"_ Sheppard said.

"Okay, form up," Lorne told the jumper pilots, "Like I told you."

The pilots acknowledged, and Lorne saw on his screen that the puddle jumpers were beginning to conform to something resembling a line, though really it was more like one line followed by a squiggle.

" _Good luck, Major,"_ Sheppard said.


	11. Chapter 11

"Dr. McKay!" the urgency in Dorsey's voice was what Rodney noticed most, and it drew him out of his concentration enough that he could hear Carson and his medical team responding to some sort of emergency with one of their patients.

It told him all he needed to know. Sheppard, Teyla and Lorne were all on their last strike. It was now or it was not at all for them. There were so many things Rodney hadn't tried to circumvent whatever security system was preventing the new code from being accepted. It would take too much time.

"Screw it," Rodney said, and yanked out one of the crystals.

"Ah!" Zelenka squeaked.

Rodney didn't need him to elaborate. The interior of the device lit up, and Rodney squinted at the brightness of it. A low whirr sounded, and Rodney knew the device was powering up, gathering energy for a pulse. Good or bad, this was it. Rodney got to his feet and stepped back.

"Brace yourselves," Rodney advised, even though he knew doing so would be useless.

Zelenka also backed up, and positioned himself beside Rodney.

"How will we know if it worked?" Zelenka inquired, "How will we know that what happens next is not a dream?"

"Well, if everything goes to hell and it feels like it's your fault, you can bet we failed," Rodney answered.

The whirr rose to an ear-piercing whine. Faintly through the noise, Rodney thought he heard a nurse say that someone was flat-lining, but he didn't know who. A moment later, the pulse fired off, and blinding light accompanied it. Blinded and deafened, Rodney couldn't guess what had happened for several seconds... or perhaps longer, because he also could not judge time.

His hearing gradually returned, and he heard someone calling his name. It took him a moment to figure out who it was, and from which direction they were calling. When he finally did, relief flooded through him and he turned to see that Sheppard had sat up and was yelling at him.

"Rodney!" Sheppard shouted again.

"Here," Rodney answered feebly, and coughed as he inhaled some dust that the device had stirred up.

"What the hell just happened?" Sheppard demanded, sounding both annoyed and disoriented, "And how the hell did we get back here?"

"That is a long, long story," Rodney answered, "And it would probably take about forty-five minutes to tell it, give or take. More importantly, how do you feel?"

Sheppard frowned at him, "Did you just ask me how I feel?"

"I think I did," Rodney said, "Isn't that what I just asked?"

"I think it was," Sheppard replied.

"Are you planning on answering?" Rodney inquired.

"I'm thinkin' about it," Sheppard said, nodding thoughtfully, then slowly he said, "I feel... like everything is fine."

Rodney cocked his head at this odd choice of phrase, "Huh."

"I'll explain later," Sheppard promised, then began to look around.

He spotted Ronon, who was just sitting up, rubbing the back of his head.

"Ronon!" Sheppard exclaimed, loudly enough that Ronon actually winced before looking his way, "You're alive! And Teyla! Rodney," he turned back to Rodney, "What the hell happened?" looking past Rodney, he spotted Lorne, "Major!"

"Sir?" Lorne responded, adding hesitantly, "You're not gonna try to strangle me again, are you?"

"What? No," Sheppard said.

"Oh good."

"Might I suggest everybody be calm," Carson said, "An' my team and I will get ye checked out. Then we can all go home. Yes? Okay."

* * *

Aside from any bruising that had been sustained prior to their being knocked out, everybody checked out fine, and Carson was pleased to instruct them to go home. Rodney was more than happy to disable the device and leave it for future research teams to deal with. He himself wanted nothing further to do with it and if he never saw it again it would be too soon.

On the way back, there was a general exchange of stories. Everyone had experienced something at least slightly different, but all had a common theme that wasn't difficult to recognize.

Ronon explained that he had been implanted with the tracker again, only this time it could not be removed. In his dream, the Atlantis team kept trying to find him and bring him back. Later, he had simply inadvertently crossed paths with them. It had gotten a lot of people killed, but Ronon himself had 'died' only once, otherwise being able to evade capture. Ronon's belief that he was being tracked and needed to leave Atlantis explained his behavior when he'd briefly become conscious, because he hadn't at the time realized what was happening was only a dream.

Like so many of them, Teyla had dreamed that the device had summoned the Wraith. The team had been attacked and overwhelmed. They were captured, but eventually escaped, with the exception of Rodney, who was killed when Teyla was unable to save him. She refused to explain exactly what had happened, but nobody pressed her on it. She and the remaining members of the team managed to return to Atlantis, only to discover that the device had been brought to the city, and it reacted to Teyla's Wraith DNA, giving away their location. Through a series of mishaps caused by Teyla, Teyla was eventually believed to be working for the Wraith, and was sent away, and later learned that Atlantis had been destroyed. She had returned to her people, only to find that she herself had been implanted with a tracking device, and had brought the Wraith right to them.

Sheppard had perhaps the strangest dream. In his, Atlantis had been invaded by the Goa'uld while he and his team were out. Major Lorne had been possessed, and Sheppard had been unable to stop him from killing Elizabeth, which explained why Sheppard had gone after Lorne the way he had when he was conscious. Sheppard's every attempt to save Atlantis had ultimately failed, resulting in death and destruction the likes of which he didn't feel up to relating for the most part. At last, in a desperate bid to try and save both the Milky Way and Pegasus Galaxies, Sheppard had purposely used the Atlantis distress signal to attract the Wraith, bringing the Goa'uld and Wraith face to face, in the hopes that they would make war on each other.

Rodney didn't share his own experience, saying only that he'd had pretty much the same sort of thing. Basically everything went to hell, and it was his fault. Lorne nodded, suggesting that he'd had the same experience as they had. Rodney knew that, of course.

"And, uh... how did it end?" Rodney asked of Sheppard.

"Oh well, it worked," Sheppard replied, "The Goa'uld and Wraith were so pissed off at each other that they went right to war, fighting over Atlantis like a couple of two-year-olds with a toy truck. Not that there was all that much left to save, what with everyone bein' dead and all."

"But it worked," Rodney persisted.

"Yeah, I guess so. Why?" Sheppard wanted to know.

"Your plan," Rodney reiterated, " _worked_."

"Yes, Rodney," Sheppard replied patiently, "It did. Why does that matter?"

"Because that didn't happen to me," Rodney told him, "I failed. All the way to the end."

"Oh," Sheppard said, and seemed to be at a loss for what else to say.

"I also succeeded at the end," Teyla ventured, "I created a distraction for the Wraith, while my people escaped through the Stargate to another world."

"I found a way to deactivate the tracking device," Ronon grunted.

"I blew up," Lorne said.

"Oh?" Rodney inquired, slightly worried.

"I took a Wraith ship with me," Lorne concluded with an indifferent shrug, "So I'd say it was worth it."

"Ah," Rodney nodded, though he still felt a bit puzzled.

Rodney didn't exactly count blowing up as a success, even if Lorne _had_ taken a Wraith ship with him. But the important thing was that Lorne counted it as a success.

* * *

Rodney would have liked to call it a night, and it was clear Carson would have preferred for his patients to lie down in beds in the infirmary so they could be observed overnight, but of course Colonel Sheppard had other ideas. Specifically, he insisted that they report in to Elizabeth. Rodney couldn't blame him. Just like Rodney, Sheppard had dreamed that Elizabeth had become a casualty of war. Like Rodney, he wanted to see everyone he'd dreamed was dead, to reassure himself that they were not.

It was probable that Carson understood this, because he allowed the meeting, which turned into an informal debriefing, during which Rodney was finally able -with the support of his team, though mostly Sheppard- to explain exactly what he thought the device was for.

"You said it was made to control the Wraith," Elizabeth said at one point, "How?"

Rodney started to answer, then hesitated. He glanced at Sheppard, who looked at him oddly, probably not yet having fully grasped the difference in their situations. Sheppard had ended on success, however small. Rodney had ended on blowing up Earth itself. Still, when Sheppard gave a slight nod of encouragement, Rodney forged on.

"Failure," Rodney said finally, his voice flat, "Relentless, unending, absolute failure on a personal level. That's how."

"I'm afraid I don't understand," Elizabeth told him.

Rodney faltered, not sure how to try and explain it. Sheppard stepped in for him.

"I do," Sheppard said, "At least... I think I do."

Rodney offered Sheppard a grateful look of relief, but Sheppard didn't appear to notice.

"Some Ancient got it into his head that there was a way to stop the Wraith without wiping them out," Sheppard said, "So they got all sciency and came up with the device to solve their problem. I guess somebody realized it might be dangerous, so they didn't run their experiments on Atlantis. Or maybe this particular Ancient wanted to build the device but he was outvoted so he had to put it together secretly. I mean, the Ancients were supposed to be smart. This device wasn't smart."

"The point is," Rodney interrupted, having regained some of his nerve, "The device was supposed to target the Wraith, but obviously something went wrong."

"You've already told us that," Elizabeth reminded Rodney patiently.

"Well I'm sorry, but there really isn't that much more to tell," Rodney replied, "When the device goes off, the pulse knocks out anyone in range, and drops them into a dream or hallucinatory state. Obviously if it worked perfectly, the subject wouldn't be able to wake up until the program was complete."

Rodney paused, glancing at the others. Sheppard and Ronon looked a little sheepish, Lorne was silently rubbing the bruise across his throat. Their expressions said as clearly as words that obviously the device didn't work perfectly on that front either. Rodney turned back to Elizabeth.

"The idea was to make the Wraith experience intense, repeated failure that they were individually almost entirely responsible for. It didn't matter if it was because they forgot a key detail of a plan, fumbled with their weapon and got somebody killed, failed to come up with a workable solution to a problem..." Rodney shook his head, "Just so long as it was their fault. As the subject started to come unraveled mentally, the failures got bigger, had greater consequences, until there was nothing left for them to destroy. Once the program ran its course, they woke up."

"Clearly that part wasna workin' correctly either," Carson pointed out.

"Actually, that's the one thing that did work. Kind of," Rodney said.

"How so?" Carson inquired.

Sheppard fielded that one, "The problem was with _us_. We didn't follow the program."

Rodney resumed his explanation when Sheppard fell silent, "Look, we," he gestured around the table, " _we_ see failure as a setback, not an end state. Now, that's very easy to say, but much harder to live, especially over and over and over, without any successful breakthroughs to counter it, until you don't even feel like getting out of bed in the morning. _We_ do that. We are -all of us- used to failing more often than we succeed. Me, I'm a scientist, a researcher, an inventor. Even as brilliant as I am... I fail nine times out of ten. An inability to make progress, a prototype malfunction-"

"Blowing up a solar system..." Sheppard muttered, causing Rodney to glare at him.

"Failure," Rodney continued, looking past Sheppard at Teyla, then back at Elizabeth, "Teyla. She's the leader of her people but, up until we came along, she had no defense against the Wraith. She failed to protect her people. Again and again. Ronon," here he gestured down the table to Ronon, "his entire people were wiped out despite his best efforts. Sheppard-"

"We get the picture!" Sheppard snapped.

Rodney gave Sheppard an unapologetic look before continuing, "We are _all_ used to failing. We are used to death and destruction being a result of that failure. The reason we continue at all is that we know it doesn't matter how many times we've failed. All that matters is that we keep trying, until we eventually do succeed. So the fail-safe kicked in."

"Fail-safe?" Elizabeth asked, "What fail-safe?"

"In the event that the device was unable to achieve the desired result, there was a fail-safe," Rodney answered, "Since we would not accept absolute failure as an option, it tried to kill us."

"By stopping our hearts," Sheppard supplied helpfully.

"It couldn't break us, so it tried to destroy us. In layman's terms, it downloaded a program into our brains that told us we were going to die, so we did," Rodney said, "But after three tries with me, it ran out of backup scenarios. It basically crashed and failed to reboot. The device was never programmed to account for a doctor standing by, trying to keep the subject alive."

"So Sheppard and the others might have woken up regardless," Elizabeth summarized.

"Maybe," Rodney said, "But we couldn't take that chance. Especially..." he faltered again, swallowed with some difficulty, then went on, "Especially not knowing what it would do to them."

When Rodney looked at his team again, he saw recognition in Sheppard's eyes. _Now_ Sheppard knew what had happened. It took him only an instant to put it all together, and to understand what had happened to Rodney, and what Rodney had done. Sheppard was smart like that.

"You changed the program," Sheppard said, "You told it to let us succeed, and then wake us up."

"To put it extremely crudely, yes," Rodney grudgingly agreed, then returned his attention to Elizabeth "Look, it was possible Carson wouldn't have been able to keep them all alive if nothing was done anyway. They could have died."

"But that's not why you did it," Sheppard persisted.

"Not entirely," Rodney admitted, looking sidelong at Sheppard, "No."

Sheppard nodded thoughtfully, and sat back in his chair. Rodney knew he wasn't done, but he was tabling it for now. But Rodney knew the man was like a bulldog, refusing to let go of something once he latched onto it. He'd never drop this now that he had hold of it.

"What I don't get," Sheppard said, choosing to change the subject, "is why the device was active in the first place. It's obviously a piece of crap, and a dangerous one at that."

"The Ancient who designed it didn't realize that in time," Rodney said, "He activated the device, thinking it was safe, that it would only target Wraith. The pulse went off, and dropped everyone in range, including the Ancients themselves, and any humans on the planet."

"It killed them?" Elizabeth asked.

"Not all of them," Rodney replied, "Not directly anyway."

"Probably some of them died like we would have if not for Dr. Beckett," Sheppard said.

"They were the lucky ones," Rodney added, "See, the others ran through the program as intended. But once the device convinced them that they were a failure at everything, they came out of it and were too discouraged to do anything. Essentially, accepting that they were complete failures who could never do anything right made them suicidal, except they couldn't even convince themselves to jump off a cliff. They just sat or lay wherever they were without doing anything, until they died a slow, painful, depressing and ultimately pointless death."

"Dear Lord," Carson whispered.

"That's why the device _can't_ work," Rodney concluded, "Either it can't convince the subject to accept what a complete failure they are and has to kill them, or else it succeeds and the subject sits around doing nothing until they die. The fact that no Ancients came to see what happens suggests either that they didn't know about the device in the first place, or else regarded it as too dangerous to ever approach."

"It was folly to think it would do anything different," Carson said, "It wasna just built to break the will of its victims, but to break their spirit as well. Even had it worked on the Wraith as intended, they canna survive on anything but humans that we know of. Unless there was a second step to the plan we dinna know about, any Wraith that stopped feeding on humans would ultimately starve to death."

"Like I said," Rodney repeated, "The device doesn't work. And it _can't_."

Rodney exhaled loudly and sat back in his chair, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose in an attempt to stave off the migraine that seemed to be set on coming in.

"So you don't think there's any reason to go back and study the device," Elizabeth said.

Without looking up, Rodney answered, "I would love to never see that thing again."

"I also would prefer not to see the device again," Teyla concurred, with a sympathetic look at Rodney, who didn't notice because he still had his eyes closed, "Whatever value studying it may potentially have, it has already done much damage, and I see no reason to risk allowing it to do more."

"What she said," Sheppard put in, "Look, I'm all for studying Ancient technology to help us develop new ways to fight the Wraith, but that thing's just plain evil."

"If we're taking a vote," Ronon spoke for the first time since the debriefing started, "I say we blow it up, so nobody else can get hurt by it."

Sheppard snapped his fingers and pointed at Ronon, signaling hearty agreement with that plan.

Elizabeth seemed moderately surprised by the apparently unanimous agreement that the device should be avoided and/or destroyed. But she had so recently had a not entirely dissimilar experience when she was infected the nanites that attempted to take her over by convincing her that Atlantis was only a dream and that she was actually insane. She could understand wanting to destroy something like that.

"Very well," Elizabeth said, "Figure out a safe way to dismantle or destroy the device, and we'll do it."

"If that concludes the meeting," Carson said, "May I take my patients to the infirmary for observation?"

"Only if you have a bed I can fall into and sleep in for a week," Rodney mumbled, still working on trying to fend off his headache.

"Aye," Carson told him, "There's plenty o' beds to go 'round."

"Oh good," Rodney said.

"I'm pretty sure we're all fine," Sheppard said, "Little groggy maybe."

"Son, ye were all very nearly dead," Carson reminded him, "And ye woulda been if not fer myself and my team. So dinna argue with me. Ye're goin' to the infirmary to be observed overnight."

"Yes, Mom," Sheppard retorted, then offered Carson a good-natured smile.

Carson, who'd had a long, frustrating and exhausting day, still managed to smile back.

As they were leaving, Elizabeth stood up and said to them, "I'm glad that you're alright."

"And we're equally delighted that you're alright," Sheppard replied cheerfully.

"Good night, Colonel," Elizabeth said.

"G'night," Sheppard returned.


	12. Chapter 12

"You sure about this, Doc?" Major Lorne inquired, watching the inner ring of the Stargate spin.

"For the thousandth time, yes I'm sure," McKay replied impatiently, "Anyway, the device is disabled. It can't do anything to anyone. We're just going to destroy it to make sure it never does again."

"Look, Major," Sheppard said, "If you don't want to go, I understand that. You don't have to. I just figured you'd like to see that thing destroyed firsthand."

"No sir," Lorne answered, "It's not that. It's just that... well... last time I was assured that device was harmless, I wound up running for my life and then getting zapped by it."

"And then, as I recall, you dreamed you blew yourself up," McKay reminded him.

"I still count that as a success, by the way," Lorne said calmly.

"See, I don't get that," McKay said, waving his hand at Lorne, "I don't get how you can count _dying_ as a _success_."

"It saved Atlantis and indirectly protected Earth as well," Lorne pointed out, "I don't see how you could count that as anything _but_ a success."

"You and I have very different ideas of what constitutes success," McKay muttered.

"Perhaps," Dr. Zelenka ventured, "that is why the Major was more rapidly adversely affected than you, and why you were the first to wake up."

"That doesn't make any sense," McKay said, "Everyone knows I'm a pessimist. It's part of my job description to assume things will go disastrously wrong. That's why I have so many plans for avoiding catastrophe. The Major," he gestured at Lorne, "wouldn't believe he was doomed if he was served to a Wraith on a platter with potatoes and carrots."

"That's because he'd sit tight, make a sound like a turnip and wait for rescue because he knows as well as you should that we never leave a man behind," Sheppard replied.

Lorne raised an eyebrow at the perceptions McKay and Sheppard seemed to have about him.

"That's ridiculous," McKay said, "Turnips don't make sounds," he paused, "Oh... oh, that was a joke, wasn't it?"

"One you should've gotten," Sheppard remarked, "You feelin' okay, Rodney?"

"I'm fine," McKay replied, "But I'll be better when this is done."

As he said this, the last chevron locked in place, and the Stargate activated.

" _Good luck, Colonel,"_ Dr. Weir spoke from the control room, and the team heard her because of their earwigs.

Sheppard turned, smiled confidently and offered her a wave.

"We'll be home in time for dinner," he promised.

" _We'll be here waiting,"_ Dr. Weir replied evenly.

Sheppard led the way through the Stargate, Ronon and Teyla flanking him. McKay and Zelenka followed, and Lorne trailed after them, assuming the rear guard position.

The planet was almost exactly as it had been last time they were here, except that this time it was raining. Lorne was uncomfortably reminded of his dream, and found himself looking around for Zelenka. He felt better when he saw the doctor right where he should be, alongside McKay and in the middle of the protective formation Sheppard had established on the other side of the Stargate.

Sheppard wasn't expecting trouble any more than anyone else, but it was standard procedure to cover all the angles. Even if it hadn't been, it was Sheppard's habit to hope for the best but be prepared for the worst. Lorne assumed that was part of what had rocketed him to the rank of colonel so quickly. Lorne hadn't been present for the expedition's first year at Atlantis, Sheppard had already been a colonel by the time they met. Lorne had never questioned why that was, merely assuming there was a good reason.

As they got underway, Sheppard relaxed, letting Ronon take the point position as was his wont, and letting Teyla serve as second point, while Lorne stayed at the rearguard position. Lorne was aware that Sheppard usually took the second point position, but apparently he had something on his mind that he wanted to discuss with McKay.

"One thing really puzzles me," Sheppard told McKay.

"Only one thing?" McKay asked.

Sheppard ignored that, "To really work on us, these dreams had to seem real. The problems had to be at least a little bit realistic. For instance, we couldn't suddenly find ourselves faced with a demonic Barney and his horde of devil Muppets without starting to have some doubts."

"Demonic Barney?" Zelenka repeated, frowning.

"For example," Sheppard replied somewhat defensively, then continued, "Just go with me on this: the enemies and situations had to be at least a little bit like reality. Every one of you dreamed about your own personal worst case scenario involving the Wraith."

"With you so far," McKay said slowly.

"That makes sense. Here in the Pegasus Galaxy, the Wraith are the big bad guys," Sheppard said, "So why is it that I dreamed about the Goa'uld? I've _barely_ even met one."

"Let me tell you," McKay said, "they're every bit as nasty as the reports indicate."

"Well, but that's the thing. You and Lorne were both involved in the Stargate program long before I was. Lorne even made several trips through the Stargate working for the SGC."

Lorne winced slightly at the reminder. He hadn't done very well on Earth. Most of those missions had been either somewhat ill-fated, or would have been had not SG-1 stepped in to help. Lorne had thus not even been on Dr. Weir's list of candidates for the expedition. It wasn't until the expedition was already gone that it was discovered that Lorne had the ATA gene. That was the only reason he'd been qualified to come here. Otherwise he'd still be back on Earth, probably screwing things up as usual.

"So how come," Sheppard was still speaking, "you two _didn't_ dream about Goa'uld, and I _did_?"

"Because..." McKay began matter-of-factly, then stopped as the realization sunk in for him, before he continued on, "Because you know about the Wraith, as much as anyone does. And you really believe we'll defeat them. You don't believe they'll ever destroy Atlantis. So another credible threat had to be introduced, one you don't know enough about to have any confidence of winning a war with."

"I've read the reports," Sheppard said, "Earth has done pretty damn well at handling the Goa'uld. If any Milky Way Galaxy bad guy should worry me, it ought to be the Ori."

"Oh please," McKay rolled his eyes, "The Ori _wish_ they were as terrifying as the Wraith."

"They're a pretty serious threat, Rodney," Sheppard reminded him, "They've taken over a lot of planets, and destroyed others. The Goa'uld, on the other hand, are mostly destroyed. The few that are left are completely disorganized and mostly have no power according to the recent reports I've read."

"You've read the same reports I have," McKay persisted, "Which means that you know the Goa'uld should _never_ be underestimated. Just when you think you've got them pinned down, they'll discover a new technology powerful enough to use a Stargate to destroy a planet, play God with genetics to create super-powered hosts, or make a clone army of themselves. The Ori are a one trick pony. Soon as we figure out the trick, they'll be done for. But there will _always_ be more Goa'uld."

"And you think that's what I believe," Sheppard said.

"The only other explanation for it is that you've actually seen a Goa'uld before," McKay said, "Whereas you've never met any of the Ori."

Sheppard frowned thoughtfully, then nodded, "I guess that sounds like me."

"Like your subconscious anyway," McKay said, "Which is of course where most people keep their secret fears. Fears they may not even be consciously aware that they have."

"You think I'm afraid of the Goa'uld?" Sheppard scoffed.

"Colonel," Lorne offered, "Anyone with any sense of self preservation at all is afraid of the Goa'uld."

"He has a point," McKay said.

"Pretending for the moment that's true," Sheppard said, "Why didn't either of you dream of the Goa'uld if they're so damned scary?"

"Maybe because we think the Wraith are scary enough without help," McKay offered.

"Major?" Sheppard turned to Lorne.

Lorne merely shrugged, "I'm not going to pretend I understand how that device works."

Sheppard nodded, "Fair enough."

They went on in silence for a time, then McKay looked over his shoulder at Lorne.

"So... uh... you really count blowing up as a success?"

"You're never gonna let that go, are you?" Lorne responded.

"Well I'm sorry if my concern offends you," McKay spat sarcastically, "But I happen to think blowing up sounds like a monumentally huge failure, or at the very least a mentally unhealthy way of being."

"You're one to talk," Lorne retorted, getting very tired of the doctor's apparent fixation on him, "You constantly think the sky is falling."

"That's because it usually _is_ ," McKay pointed out.

Lorne rolled his eyes, but Sheppard spoke before he could think of a response.

"Boys, boys, please. Can't we all just be happy we're alive and be satisfied with that?"

" _He_ started it," Lorne said.

"I just want to be sure we're done with the device _before_ we blow it up," McKay said, "Because I'd rather not find out later that we screwed up and need to rebuild the thing."

"I'm fine," Lorne told him firmly, "And, even if I wasn't, we'd still need to blow that thing up. Besides, if anybody's not fine, it's _you_. You're the one who played the original game to the end."

"Drop it, Major," Sheppard admonished.

Thus rebuked, Lorne fell silent. It didn't seem fair that McKay got to constantly single him out and pressure him about the whole blowing up thing, but when he started pushing back the colonel shut him down, but he accepted his lot. More specifically, he accepted that Sheppard was his undisputed CO.

Frankly, he didn't see how it was unhealthy to count dying in service to his team and home as a win. Granted, he'd have preferred not blowing up, especially since McKay had been picking on him about it ever since, but that hadn't been a realistic option in the scenario he'd been dreaming of. They'd been losing, and badly, and for Lorne there had been only two choices: crash and burn alone, or take a Wraith ship with him. He felt like he'd made the right choice, even if it had proven to be just a dream.

He supposed McKay assumed that he could come up with a brilliant last minute plan to avoid dying. But that was McKay's department, not Lorne's. Lorne fought the enemy as best he could, and followed his orders even when they no longer made sense to him because he trusted Sheppard's judgment, and had faith in his team, and in Dr. Weir if it came to that. Whatever anyone else said or thought, Lorne couldn't count loyalty to the death as a fault.

And by now he'd seen enough to know that, deep down, McKay didn't either. He didn't have to like the man to respect that -when it came right down to the wire and everything was on the line- McKay was always able to come through, willing to do whatever it took to get the job done and save the day, up to and including losing his own life in the process.

That meant he understood what McKay was doing now. Lorne could only imagine how he would have felt had he failed to take that Wraith ship with him, and watched helplessly as it destroyed Atlantis. McKay had suffered that at least, possibly worse. Even though none of it had been real, Lorne still felt the emotional turmoil it had inflicted. He still felt the self-doubt. He still felt hurt.

He had no doubt but that McKay's concern for him was an expression of the doctor's own self-doubt. McKay had been the one to reprogram the device. He was terrified that he'd done something wrong somehow, and he'd singled Lorne's dream out as the obvious place he might have failed. Lorne didn't have to like it (and he didn't), but he _did_ understand it.

What frustrated him was that he couldn't get McKay to let go of it. And every time Dr. McKay brought it up, everyone who heard his doubts would start looking at Lorne funny, and treating him like he was made of glass. And that made him angry. He couldn't do his job right with everyone walking on eggshells around him. Every time McKay got on the topic, Lorne's annoyance grew. He couldn't help it, any more than he could help the fact that the damage Sheppard had inflicted on his throat forced him to speak unusually softly, which only contributed to the perception that something was wrong with him.

They made the rest of the trip in relative silence, except for McKay's almost continual complaints about the distance, travel speed, weather and Zelenka's opinion on some incomprehensible science project the two of them were working on back at Atlantis.

Despite the fact that he had the authority, both because Dr. Weir said so and because of his personal standing with the man, Sheppard did nothing to silence McKay. Lorne would never understand it. McKay's constant whining had to be just as grating to Sheppard as it was to Lorne, and indeed everyone who'd ever had even brief contact with McKay, but the colonel mostly tolerated it in silence, only occasionally voicing a complaint or two of his own in the form of a snide or sarcastic remark.

Lorne vaguely wondered if the freedom to whine like a bitch was McKay's standing reward for saving the day on more than one occasion. Even thinking about it in those terms made the sound of McKay's voice somehow more tolerable, so he supposed that must be it.

Eventually they got to the device.

Though he had reprogrammed and disabled it himself, McKay regarded the object with clear wariness, as though it were a sleeping tiger he didn't want to disturb. In a way, it was exactly that. After all, McKay had only turned it off. It would probably be all too easy for it to be turned back on. Lorne certainly had no intention of touching it himself. Even if that hadn't seemed like an idiot move before, Lorne had not forgotten what happened in his dream. McKay had given him a win at the end, but Lorne had no trouble imagining how it might have gone had the doctor not intervened.

Zelenka seemed to regard McKay's hesitation with some bafflement. Lorne reminded himself that Dr. Zelenka had never been zapped by the device. If he had, he'd have understood exactly why McKay was hanging back. But he hadn't, so he didn't, and he just looked at McKay oddly.

"Well," McKay said finally, "We better get started."

The way McKay and Zelenka explained it, dismantling the device was actually a relatively simple procedure. For the sake of thoroughness, they were going to go into its computer and erase all of the data from it, including all of the codes meant to trigger it into action. Then they would remove both the data and power crystals. The power crystals they would bring back for study. The data crystals would be relocated and subsequently destroyed, just to be sure that no trace of their contents could be recovered. The device itself, once the guts and brain were removed, would be obliterated by C4.

The two scientists had made all of that sound terribly easy, but Lorne -no slouch when it came to technology- had messed around with enough of the stuff on Atlantis that Zelenka and McKay regarded as "simple tech" to realize that easy for them would be impossible for him. There'd been a time when he didn't think much of geeky tech nerd types, but his years on Atlantis had taught him some respect. They still drove him nuts, and he'd prefer a good M9 to any of the fancy Ancient stuff any day he could get away with it, but he wasn't about to go mucking about with that device or any other alien technology he should happen upon without the express permission and instruction of someone like McKay or Zelenka or at least somebody on their staff. He liked being alive and in one undamaged piece entirely too well to take that sort of a risk.

McKay and Zelenka set to work, and were soon hissing and spitting at each other like a couple of angry cats. Experience had taught Lorne that this meant things were going well. It was when they settled into grim silence that one should be worried. So long as they had the energy and mental processes to spare on arguing, things weren't dire enough to start saying prayers and fond farewells; progress was still being made, meaning there was still a chance. It was clear they were concentrating though, largely because any and all complaints about the weather and the aches brought on by the long walk here immediately ceased, as if McKay and Zelenka were no longer aware of either of those things.

No longer in motion or with any particular task to accomplish, Lorne became suddenly more aware of the rain. It wasn't as cold as he'd dreamed, and he was already soaked through, so there wasn't much of anything to do except stand around, waiting for McKay and Zelenka to do their job.

Out of habit and boredom more than anything, the team spread out around the ruins, exploring around but mostly checking out any possible ambush sites... possibly to reassure themselves that there was in fact nobody here, despite what some of them had dreamed. That is, except for Lorne, whom Sheppard gave the assignment of keeping an eye on McKay and Zelenka.

"You expect them to wander away and get lost?" Lorne inquired, only half joking.

"No, but if something does go wrong, I'd rather somebody who has good radio discipline to tell me about it. Besides, if any gremlins do happen to hop out of that thing, you've got faster reflexes than they do," Sheppard said, but he spoke with an amused smile on his face, which told Lorne that he really wasn't expecting any trouble, was fully aware of the boredom he was forcing Lorne to endure, and had no sympathy at all.

As Sheppard sauntered away to look around the ruins as a means of passing the time, Lorne wondered what he'd done to tick the man off this time.

* * *

About an hour later, Lorne had settled into a thoughtful state, and had managed to pretty much ignore the sound of Zelenka and McKay fighting amongst themselves. But he suddenly became aware of a strained silence. Drawing out of his thoughts, he looked around and saw that Zelenka looked moderately annoyed, not with the device, but with McKay.

"What's up?" Lorne inquired.

Zelenka unleashed and annoyed stream of Czech, and gestured emphatically at McKay. Lorne didn't understand the words, but he guessed from the gestures of Zelenka and the expression on McKay's face that they were almost done, but that McKay was hesitating at the last second.

Lorne sighed, wishing Sheppard were here. He understood better than anybody how to motivate McKay, which he did with a curious combination of encouragement, insults and demands for status reports he didn't actually expect to receive or understand. Knowing he could not replicate that, Lorne nonetheless came over to see what he could do.

"What's the problem, Doc?" Lorne asked of McKay.

McKay just sort of looked at him helplessly, apparently afraid. Lorne knew that look, because he'd felt its cause before. Afraid to fail. Afraid to make the wrong move. Afraid he was making the wrong choice. Afraid of the potential consequences for being wrong.

It was a decidedly strange look to see on someone as unflinchingly arrogant as McKay.

Lorne froze for a beat, then put his hand on McKay's shoulder gently.

"I'm really okay, Doc," Lorne assured him softly, "Shut it down."

McKay stayed where he was for a moment, then abruptly he nodded and turned back to his laptop. Lorne backed off, figuring he might want breathing room, or that Zelenka might need the space to look over McKay's shoulder... or something. Actually, he didn't know why he moved back. It just seemed like the thing to do. McKay didn't appear to notice.

After a series of keystrokes that oddly reminded Lorne more of someone playing the piano more than typing, McKay sat back and observed the information on his screen changing for several moments.

"There," he declared finally, "Done. Now let's get those crystals out of this thing so we can all go home."

"Can I help?" Lorne offered, though he didn't really want to.

"No," McKay said bluntly, without looking up, "You'd just be in the way."

Lorne shook his head and started to walk away, at once amused and irritated by the dismissal.

"Oh, and Major," Lorne turned to find McKay was now looking straight at him, "Thanks."

Lorne smiled slightly and nodded without a word.

McKay nodded back without smiling, and then went back to work.


	13. Epilogue

**_A/N: Deepest apologies for being late with this final chapter/epilogue, so sorry. But here it is at last, so I hope you enjoy it, thanks for reading (and reviewing), g'night everybody._**

* * *

Rodney couldn't sleep.

It had been over a week since they had destroyed the device, almost two since the mission to the planet had led them to encounter it in the first place. And yet -every time Rodney closed his eyes- he was terrified that he was going to wake up and find he was still trapped in its program. Every time he got a moment to himself, he couldn't help remembering that it had been his curiosity that had led them there to begin with. And that led him to wonder what would have happened if he hadn't been able to reprogram it. The potential for failure had been high, and he hadn't had time to process that fear at the time. Now it sent him into fits of shivering almost every night.

Usually a sleepless night would drive him to the lab, into a working frenzy. But ever since he'd been hit by the pulse from the device, Rodney had been a little bit scared of working on anything. He was afraid of messing up. That had always been a possibility before, one Rodney had accepted without blinking, even immediately following a major screw up. But something about believing he was on Earth with the Wraith closing in, and realizing that everything he'd lost up to that point had been his fault, and then recognizing that he had just set the Stargate to overload and blow up the last of the people he cared about... that had really rattled him. Even now he was awake, here on Atlantis, he still sometimes couldn't quite shake the feeling that he'd destroyed the world.

Tonight Rodney's restlessness got the better of him. After pacing around his room for awhile, he eventually left. Atlantis was quiet at night, but never entirely still. Always there were technicians and researchers at work, no matter the time of day or night. The city was vast, and they only inhabited a pocket of it. Rodney's footsteps eventually led him out to one of the piers, far away from all the people, all the lights, every sign that Atlantis was occupied.

It was quiet out here, except for the sound of the ocean gently roaring. Though Rodney hadn't brought any light with him, his eyes adjusted quickly to the light from the moon and stars, which were imperfectly reflected on the surface of the slow rolling waves.

Rodney often felt very small, very fragile, very helpless and very insignificant. But never more than when he was out in the dark, standing alone in the night and wondering why he was here.

He supposed in a way that was the question that drove all scientists. All of them were motivated by the why and wherefore of things. How did things work? Why did they work? What could they be used for? All of that could be traced to the fundamental question of existence itself. Rodney felt sure that nobody was closer to answering that question than the people whose lives were entwined with the Stargates, around which the whole universe sometimes seemed to center, yet at other times they almost seemed... superfluous. And yet, however close he was, Rodney felt very far away. Not just from the answer to that indefinable question, but from home, and who he was, as well as who he'd been. Maybe everyone felt adrift sometimes, especially when they lived on an ocean, but Rodney felt positively lost right now, so confused he couldn't even be sure whether he was drowning or swimming to shore.

Now he stood in the dark, alone, gazing out at an alien ocean, not really sure what he was doing there, or why he was doing it. He'd always been afraid of the water, or more precisely being in it, or even more precisely being in it with something terrifying. Understanding the source of this fear did nothing to allay it, any more than understanding the need to drink water could in itself make him less thirsty. The facts were all well and good, but some key component was missing.

Now he felt like he was standing on the edge of something profound, but somehow it was always just beyond his grasp. Somehow he was always missing that one piece that would make the whole world make sense. He lacked that one important thing that would make him comfortable in his own skin. The one all consuming detail that would prove to him that he belonged.

He'd been hoping the mark left on him by the device would fade, that it was something his body would just eventually purge. Maybe that was true, but the psychological component lingered on. That was something Rodney didn't know how to deal with, could not hope to figure out. It had gradually come to his attention that he was a messed up person. That there was something missing, or broken inside him, something that didn't allow him to interact with other people in the "right" way.

It had taken him a long, long time to realize that what he'd perceived as wrong with other people was actually something wrong with him. Of all the technology, all of the science, all of the advancements he'd been learning about since coming to Atlantis, the thing that had been perhaps most important of all to him personally was that he'd discovered what having friends was like, and he'd realized that there was something drastically wrong with a person who had to go to another galaxy to find people who would voluntarily spend time with him in their off hours.

So far, he hadn't managed to really figure out what that was, or make any real progress on it. And now the device had given him something else he had to live with, some other bit of filth that was trying to ruin his already messy life. Another crack in the glass, he supposed.

People had noticed the drop in his confidence, and the increase in his displays of temper. Elizabeth and Carson had both asked if he was alright, and recommended he spend some time with Kate Heightmeyer. Already familiar with the psychologist, Rodney wasn't entirely opposed to the idea.

But the real help had been Dr. Zelenka, who staunchly refused to alter the way they had been doing things the last few years. He argued vehemently with Rodney, but seemed to sense when Rodney was about to give in and would back off, letting Rodney have his way. He made things feel normal, and the fact that he always caved to Rodney in the end helped to restore his shattered confidence. Rodney wasn't sure if Zelenka was trying to help him, or if the man was merely fending off his own demons. Zelenka was a difficult man to know. There was a strange duality to him, as if he were two different people. One of them Rodney liked and trusted and enjoyed working with. The other Rodney simply couldn't stand. If anyone had asked if Zelenka and he were friends, Rodney would have been forced to answer that it depended on the day or -depending on the day- he would emphatically state that he didn't even like the man and found him slightly creepy. What he did know was that Zelenka's persistent pursuit of what passed for normal in Atlantis made Rodney feel better. There was something bizarrely comforting about winning an argument and watching Zelenka wandering off, muttering irately in Czech. It felt right, like it was how things should be.

"You're wrong, you know."

Rodney jumped at the sound of the familiar but unexpected voice.

"Sheppard," Rodney acknowledged the colonel, "What are you doing out here?"

"Somebody's been pacing around in the hall outside my room the last five or six nights," Sheppard replied neutrally, "Makes it kind of hard to sleep, so I decided to take a walk."

"Sorry," Rodney said, because he had been the one doing all the pacing.

"Ah," Sheppard waved his hand dismissively, "You've had to stay up days at a time working on trying to save the city and the people in it enough times, I'll survive a few late nights."

"Oh," was all Rodney could think to say.

There were several seconds where they both just stood there awkwardly, sort of staring at each other. Then Sheppard took a few strides forward, bringing him to Rodney's side. He looked out across the ocean, and Rodney eventually followed suit. The silence became more comfortable. Then Rodney remembered what Sheppard had said when he first arrived, and he became curious.

"So... what is it I'm wrong about?" Rodney inquired.

"When you told me about what the device made you..." Sheppard waved his hand, not finding whatever word he wanted.

"See? Experience? Dream? Hallucinate?" Rodney offered helpfully.

"Whatever," Sheppard said, then went on, "You said that you failed. But you're wrong. In fact, you succeeded better than any of the rest of us."

"I blew up the Earth," Rodney reminded him.

"You found a way out," Sheppard corrected, "You got out of that darkness the device put you in, and then you turned on a light for the rest of us to follow. You led us home."

Rodney didn't know what to say, so he just looked down at his feet, uncomfortable with the evident praise and not knowing how to react to it. Sheppard didn't know how close Rodney had come to not doing any of that. He could just as easily have stayed stuck in the dream, or perhaps he could have died. Even once he was out, he almost couldn't figure out how to reprogram the device, and he hadn't done as good a job of it as he'd been hoping, as evidenced by the fact that -though he had technically succeeded in what he was trying to accomplish- Major Lorne had ended up dead in his dream. By so little had all of their lives been spared.

"Look," Sheppard said with a shrug, "I'm not very good at this."

"Good at what?" Rodney asked.

"People," Sheppard answered flatly, "Give me something to shoot at and I can save their lives, but the..." he gestured again, but this time Rodney was at a loss to play thesaurus for him, unable to guess what it was he was trying to get at, "...personal stuff... emotions and all that..." he was trying to find words again, but Rodney was only getting more confused.

"I'm not sure I follow," Rodney admitted.

"Well..." Sheppard dropped the hand he'd been using to gesture with and sighed, "Well... uh... you and I, we're... uh... close? No. Yes... you know."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Rodney told him, "But I do know it's making me uncomfortable."

"See? I'm also uncomfortable," Sheppard exclaimed, as if that was some kind of explanation, "And... and I think that's because we're..." he nodded, but didn't finish the sentence.

"Close?" Rodney guessed.

"Close," Sheppard concerned, "And... well, I'm worried about you. And I'm trying to help. But... I don't know..." he hesitated, waving his hand in the air futilely before saying with a heavy sigh, "How."

"How," Rodney repeated.

"Exactly," Sheppard said, "I know something's wrong, Rodney. Whatever that device did to you inside has you shaking so badly you can barely hold an M9 on the shooting range."

"I've never been good with guns," Rodney said defensively.

"Rodney," Sheppard told him firmly, "You're an excellent shot. When you're focused."

"Have you seen me shooting at Wraith? I almost never hit them," Rodney reminded him, "Sometimes I even eject my magazine when I mean to take off the safety."

"That's because you're scared," Sheppard said, "And now I see you... you're scared... all the time. And I don't know why."

"I'm naturally cowardly," Rodney said, "Everything scares me. Even _I_ know I'm a hypochondriac, that's how much everything scares me. You could probably scare me by blowing your nose too loudly into a Kleenex."

"Some people could scare anybody by blowing their nose loudly," Sheppard told him, "They sound like they're reinventing the trumpet inside their nasal passages."

Rodney opened his mouth to explain why that was, but then he thought better of it. Seeing that his attempt a levity wasn't panning out, Sheppard sighed again.

"Look, Rodney, I just know... I know you're hurt," Sheppard spoke gently, "And I don't understand-" he didn't get to finish, because Rodney interrupted him.

"Neither do I. I don't understand... why I feel the way I do, why I act like I do or why I can't sleep..." he knew he was beginning to sound hysterical as he spoke, but he couldn't stop himself before saying the final, damning thing, "or... why I even exist at all."

He fell silent, gazing at Sheppard, looking for some kind of answer in the other man's eyes. He saw a mirror of his confusion there, but a sort of calm that he himself wasn't capable of.

"Rodney..." Sheppard said slowly, his voice steady, "You are... brilliant."

"What?" it wasn't that Rodney didn't believe that, it was that he'd never expected Sheppard to say it.

"Let me finish," Sheppard rebuked him firmly, then continued where he left off, "You can... look at an impossible problem, and figure out how to solve it in a matter of minutes. To you, the whole world is like... like a puzzle to solve. And you're good at it. Really good. But maybe... sometimes... instead of being brilliant, you should try to just... be."

"Like you?" Rodney asked.

"Like you," Sheppard corrected, "Not you the physicist. Not you the head of science and research in Atlantis. Not even you the off-world explorer, the technology wizard. Just... you. Rodney."

"I don't understand," Rodney said, shaking his head slightly.

"Sometimes life isn't about solving problems. Sometimes you have to take a break from trying to figure everything out and just... be there. Be in the moment, whatever moment it is."

This time Sheppard got it right, or near enough that Rodney got what he was trying to say.

"You don't have to fix everything," Sheppard persisted when Rodney was silent, "And you don't have to be perfect. I don't know if it was because of how quickly you came up with solutions to the problems you were presented with, or maybe your overwhelming pessimism... either way, what I do know is that it was you who got me out of the nightmare I was living. _You_ did that for me, even though you were scared. That took courage. And... I'm grateful."

"I was also the one who got us into trouble in the first place," Rodney reminded him.

"Yeah... well... everybody makes mistakes," Sheppard said, "But not everybody is as determined to make them right as you are. Most people, they make a mistake and then throw up their hands, saying 'Oh well; it's too late to fix it now.' But not you. You always ask yourself 'How can I make this better? How can I undo what I've done?' That's rare. And that's what you did here. You couldn't have known what the device would do, or even that it was active in the first place. But when everything went to Hell, you didn't quit... even though you felt like it. You kept going, and you saved us."

Rodney blushed, looking at the ground, "We don't have to hug now, do we?"

"No," Sheppard said, turning abruptly to face the ocean again, "No, we don't."

"Oh good," Rodney said, and also turned towards the ocean.

With Sheppard standing beside him, suddenly Rodney wasn't afraid anymore. It wasn't that the sky was any smaller, the ocean any less deep or the night any less dark. It was simply that he wasn't alone. If he fell, Sheppard would be there to pick him up. If he faltered, Sheppard could steady him. If he started to drown, Sheppard would come and pull him out. He could believe that. He could trust in that.

"Thanks," Rodney said after a period of silence had passed between them.

"For what?" Sheppard asked, not looking away from the dark waters in front of him.

"For being my friend," Rodney answered.

Sheppard jerked, turned and looked at Rodney, who looked back at him.

Then he relaxed, smiled, and replied, "Always."

Together, the two friends stood facing the night, each content for the moment to simply be.


End file.
